Press
Ocean Gold's investment in new offloading system for 2007 Whiting/Sardine Season pays off
WESTPORT, WASH. -- January 30, 2008 -- After many months of design and construction Ocean Gold, in conjunction with Carnitech US, Inc. completed work on a revamped waterfront dock at the Westport production facility in Spring of 2007. The redesign of the existing waterfront was called for after discovering that the current infrastructure for offloading, grading, and weighting seafood could not keep pace with the companies rapid production improvements and site growth plan.
The new design provides Ocean Gold with many benefits including but not limited to:
Improved environmental compliance: All water that passes onto or around the dock is now recovered and either returned to the vessel or run through the wastewater treatment facility adjacent to the dock.
Improved employee safety: The sorting area is now surrounded on every side by dock space as well as carefully designed walkway and sorting platforms that coincide with Ocean Gold's new industry leading safety plan.
Automation Improvements: The old system of moving product involved large plastic bins and was inefficient in both speed and accuracy as well as required the purchase of new bins every year due to forklift use. The new system is entirely automated with product being conveyed directly into the production plant after being sorted and size graded, plastic bins are only used when there is a need to store or move product in an unconventional fashion.
Weight Accuracy Improvements: Every pound of product that gets removed from the boat is weighted before human hands can intervene. Ocean Gold has designed the weight system to batch weight each cycle of fish that is removed via suction pump (Commonly referred to as a fish pump) before it even hits the sorting hopper. After the vessel's catch has been sorted and offloading is complete, the bycatch and waste will be weighted and subtracted from the overall batch weight to provide a 100% accurate total fish weight for each species of fish removed from the vessel.
Size Sorting Improvements: In addition to the old-style roller sorting conveyer previously in use, Ocean Gold has made a significant investment in a new Style grading machine to more accurately size grade a larger volume of fish. Style is known worldwide in the seafood industry for their revolutionary sortation systems and we are confident our customers and partners will see an increased quality from our product.
In addition to the changes on the waterfront dock, Ocean Gold has spent considerable effort to ramp up the production of its main shore based plant yet again. 2007 improvements include: Two new VMK Heading and Gutting machines to increase production of whiting, an entirely new packing and freezing line in the south wing of our production plant, and startup of our new production facility for H&G (Head and Gut) Pacific Sardines utilizing Swedefish automatic loading and cutting machines.
The improvements helped Ocean Gold achieve yet another successful year in the Whiting and Sardine fisheries.
ABOUT OCEAN GOLD
Ocean Gold Seafoods, Inc began as Merino’s Seafoods, a small buyer and processor of Dungeness crab, in August of 1990, and over the years has developed into one of the largest multi-species processors of crab, fish, and other seafoods on the Pacific Coast of the United States. With an aggressive growth outlook and year over year growth in all resource allocations Ocean Gold Seafoods is involved in, Ocean Gold Seafoods has become the premiere processor of Whiting and Dungeness Crab on the Pacific Coast. For more information visit www.oceangoldseafoods.com.