The broker for the world’s largest fish factory vessel said there has been no concrete interest in the vessel three months after going on sale, raising the prospect it will be sold off for scrap.
Scrapping the vessel would be a shame, however, because its colossal onboard processing and freezing capacity could be employed to supply fish to some of the world’s poorest countries.
Many African nations, among others, are looking for cheap protein. And if any vessel can do it in the world, this one can do it,” Ture Korsager of Atlantic Shipping told Undercurrent News.
The 228-meter, 38,500-metric ton (gross tonnage) ‘mothership’ is being sold by the Danish ship broker as part of the restructuring of the Pacific Andes group of companies. The group filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last summer in the US.
Along with Damanzaihao, Atlantic Shipping is touting a fleet of ‘catcher vessels’ which operate in tandem with Damanzaihao and are also owned by the Pacific Andes group. Last month, Atlantic Shipping sold one catcher vessel — Pacific Voyager — to an Andrew Marr-linked firm in Greenland called Arctic Raven.
Other vessels in the fleet on sale include Pacific Champion, Pacific Hunter, Liafjord and the Enterprise.
But while the other vessels are standard pelagic vessels which could join most pelagic fleets, according to Korsager, Damanzaihao is another prospect entirely. By far the world’s largest processor and reefer vessel”, he said, to operate Damanzaihao requires nothing less than big business.
Damanzaihao was built in 1980 by Japanese ship builder Nikkei, for a Soviet-era Russian logistics company. It was designed not as a fishing vessel but a 67,000t dead weight/TDW oil tanker.
In 2008, in a Chinese shipyard, Pacific Andes had fish processing and freezing machinery installed into the hold. According to the New York Times, the reconfiguration cost $100 million.
Damanzaihao’s 232 vertical freezers can together freeze 1,500t of fish in 24 hours. Seven production lines — equivalent to a fair-sized onshore fish processing facility, said Korsager automatically package the fish. Its cargo hold can store 15,000t, while it can accommodate a crew of 320. Seven cranes load and unload fish to and from catcher and reefer vessels for transshipment.
The New York Times report said Damanzaihao alone has the technical capacity to process 547,000t of fish a year, if it operated every day.
But the vessel tended to spread unease wherever it went. After becoming the flagship vessel of China Fisheries Group, the arm of Pacific Andes based in Peru, with its fleet of catcher vessels Damanzaihao would catch vast quantities of jack mackerel off the coasts of South America.
In 2014, the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization put Damanzaihao on a draft list of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) vessels fishing in the region. The reason for the inclusion was that it had been fishing in the region in the summer without authorization.
Later that year Damanzaihao was removed from the list, with Pacific Andes alluding to a misunderstanding. However, in early 2015, it was again put on the list and its inclusion was finalized. It still remains on the list. Korsager said that where she will compete with shore industry, she’s not welcome.
Korsager concedes Damanzaihao’s size makes it an obvious target for governments and NGO’s worried about overfishing.
But he said Damanzaihao can do a job which other fishing vessels can’t or won’t: preserve fish caught far from shore and have it shipped long distances to where it can be consumed by humans.
He added this means fish otherwise caught anyway and shipped to fishmeal plants closer by — which produce fishmeal for animals including farmed fish — would be put to better use.
Nobody is discussing 1,500t of fish put daily into fishmeal everywhere around the world. But as soon as the fish is frozen, then suddenly it becomes a problem.”
That is a very ironic situation because these guys should have a premium — they should be rewarded for doing this, not just making fishmeal out of good fish. For instance, near the Faroe Islands [Damanzaihao] used to do a tremendous job freezing a lot of fish that would have otherwise gone to fishmeal.
A vessel with its freezing and processing capacity can also work in areas which are not serviced by any shore industries, he said, such as in parts of Africa. With Damanzaihao, the [processing] buildings are just afloat, so to speak. So possibly it’s a little bit more expensive to operate this way, but it’s also more flexible.
The catch is Damanzaihao’s size, running costs and huge business commitment needed. Furthermore, Damanzaihao has spent two years idle in port — not good for any vessel, said Korsager, although its Russian engineers did a tremendous job looking after the boat” and it’s in a “surprisingly good condition”.
We have spoken to African investors. We have spoken to Russian investors. It’s no secret that there has been interest, although nothing yet concrete,” he said. “It’s a big enterprise to put together, so I think it’s fair to say that people are considering how.”
“But I would love to see this ship getting a hint of positivity, rather than just people dooming it.”
Damanzaihao and the catcher vessels wound up in the port of Lima, Peru amid liquidity shortages at Pacific Andes’ Peruvian business.
Sustainable Fishing Resources — a subsidiary of the group and Damanzaihao’s current owner — was not available for comment.
2017 Undercurrent New