Silungur hf grades fresh Arctic Char with the Marel Compact Grader

Silungur hf., produces Arctic Char on a 26.000 m3 land based farm at its Vogar facility on the South-West coast of Iceland. The company is a leading producer of this species in the world with an annual production of up to 1200 tons.

Last summer the company started looking into the possibility of automatically grading the fish and tested the Marel Compact Grader for that purpose. The test runs were successful and Silungur hf installed its first Compact Grader in September 2003. Since then the grader has been operating in a very harsh environment with good results.

"Our product is of the highest quality," says Jónatan Þórðarsson, General Manger. "The time from slaughtering to packing needs to be as short as possible and we wanted to install automatic grading equipment to streamline the operation and save time and labour."

After slaughtering, the fish goes straight into grading where it is graded out whole into 6 main grades. The fish is then put into slush ice to bleed for a few hours and then packed into plastic crates. It is then iced again and exported fresh via airfreight, mainly to the USA.

Quick and efficient weighing and grading with gentle handling is important in this kind of operation where quality and freshness are the biggest concern.

"We pride ourselves in being able to produce fish that have all the best qualities of naturally grown Char, while also having the benefits that come from a quality controlled environment," says Jónatan. "The Compact Grader fit well into our operation and we are very happy with how it has performed in our facility"