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The Jury has made its decision.
A total of 18 applications from Norway and foreign countries had been received by the deadline the 15th of May for the Aqua Nor Innovation Award 2011. This is a greater number of applications that at any time before, for both Nor-Fishing and Aqua Nor. The Jury has had a lot to go through to evaluate the applications and the innovative aspects of the proposals, and has now given its opinion
and selected three finalists. The Board of Directors of the Nor-Fishing Foundation will then, on the basis of the advice from the Jury, select the final winner of the Aqua Nor Innovation Award, and the winner will receive the award during the reception on Tuesday 16th
August.
This year’s applications cover a wide field challenges in the aquaculture industry. Director Ola Eriksen of the Aqua Nor exhibition comments that several of the applications deal with treatment of salmon lice and equipment to prevent escapes. Many projects are the result of cooperation between fish farmers, equipment suppliers and research groups, a fact that shows that all parties are seriously concerned with coming to grips with the important challenges facing the industry.
This year’s finalists are, in alphabetical order:
- Flatsetsund Engineering AS at Frei outside of Kristiansund has developed a pumping system with built-in nozzles that flush the lice off the salmon as the fish is pumped from one cage into another. The equipment does not create any measurable stress in the fish, it eliminates the use of chemicals and reduces the occurrence of lice on the wild fish in the environment.
- Maskon AS at Stjørdal north of Trondheim has developed a fully automatic vaccine machine for salmon and trout smolt. Manual vaccination has been extremely labour intensive and often somewhat unsafe for those who work with the syringes. With this
new machine 20,000 fish can be vaccinated in one hour, and to vaccinate 200,000 fish, the manpower requirements can be reduced by 10 – 12 persons by using the automatic machine.
- Nutrio AS in Fredrikstad has developed a simple, hand-held measuring equipment that gives instant information about the fish’s colour, fat content, shelf life etc. The measuring is done without causing any harm to the fish and it is extremely quick and easy to use. The equipment should be of great interest to all parts of the value chain, from farmer through to retail store.
The Jury members include Kjell Maroni, Head of Section, FoU Aquaculture the Norwegian Seafood Federation, Viggo Andreassen, senior advisor at Innovation Norway, Petter Arnesen, responsible for feed, environment, breeding and genetics at Marine Harvest AS, and Tor
Anders Elvegaard, Project Director of the Norlaks Group.
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