Product development isn’t limited to the drawing board for Josh Dunham, general manager and technical supervisor for Mustad Autoline in North America. “I go out on the boats sometimes,” says Dunham. “I went out for three days with one of our testers for our new pot hauler. He was fishing golden king crab in southeast Alaska, and he was using it to haul 7-foot diameter cone pots.”
According to Dunham, an 800cc radial piston motor designed for marine applications and manufactured by Ital Group in Modena, Italy, powers the 16-inch diameter hauler. “The 16-inch diameter fits the needs of customers hauling pots or longline but can go bigger or smaller depending on the customer’s demands,” says Dunham. The sheaves can be changed according to the requirements of the fishery and the diameter of the line being hauled. “We use cast iron sheave,” Dunham says. “The crystalline surface of cast iron provides a better grip and resists corrosion better.”
Bringing new products to market can be expensive, but Dunham notes that the facilities and work ethic of the Norwegian company allow for rapid development. “They can do everything right there, and we can bring products to market very quickly,” he says. “We saw a market for a pot hauler, for example, and we had a model ready for testing in six months.”
The new Mustad Autoline pot and longline hauler are just one of several new products the company is developing as it probes new markets. “We also have a compact heading and gutting machine, the Loppa 100, that we’re marketing for onboard processing,” says Dunham. “And we’re looking at branching out more into processing equipment.”
The Loppa comes in two sizes: the Loppa 100 for onboard vessels and the 200 for land-based applications. “It’s built by a company called Havfront and has been on the market for four or five years,” says Dunham. “They also make a heavier-duty machine called the Folla, and we’re redesigning that with our Siemens electronics controls and marinizing it more. It’s a land-based machine, but they have it on one vessel in Norway.”
The Loppa 100 heading and gutting machine has a minimal footprint—40 inches by 20 inches by 47 inches high— and is being used on vessels from as small as 27 feet up to 270 feet. “It can head and gut around 20 fish a minute,” says Dunham. “Which is about what a human could do, but one of the biggest problems for vessels these days is finding crew.” So far, Dunham has one boat in Alaska lined up for a Loppa 100 and another in Newfoundland. He also sees small trawlers as a possible market. “We’re hoping to build into that,” he says.
Dunham and Hans Jacob Mustad, the son of company chairman Hans H. Mustad, manned the Mustad Autoline booth at Pacific Marine Expo 2024 in Seattle last November, and Dunham calls it a good experience. “There was a lot of interest,” he says. “We sold one of the haulers. Our tester bought it.”
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