For fishermen operating in harsh environments, success depends on having the right equipment, and that includes propellers and thrusters. César Torres and his daughter Gabi manned the Ships Machinery International (SMI) booth at the 2024 Pacific Marine Expo, offering what they believe are the most dependable propellers on the market.
“I used to work for Rice Propellers in Mexico,” says Torres. “SMI was my customer. When I left Rice, I came to work for them.”
SMI is the U.S. distributor for Norwegian-based Brunvoll AS, and Torres is vice president of sales in the U.S. “Brunvoll used to only produce bow thrusters,” he says. “Then in 2017 they bought Scana Propulsion, another Norwegian company, and now they produce CPP—controllable-pitch propellers—up to 20,000 kW (26,800-hp). That’s huge.”
Torres has sold the thrusters and propellers used on some of the most well-known vessels in the Alaska fleet, including the 194-foot factory trawler Araho, owned by the Maine-based O’Hara Corporation. “We sold them thrusters for some of their other boats, too,” says Torres. “In fact, Frank was just here,” he adds, referring to O’Hara Corporation’s president, Frank O’Hara Jr.
For Torres and his daughter, a corporate lawyer who joins her father at the Pacific Marine Expo just for fun, the event is something of a vacation and a chance for Torres to meet face-to-face with many of his customers. “We have sold to Alaska Leader, Fishermen’s Finest, Ocean Peace, and others. In fact, I just got a message from Ocean Peace. We are servicing the FU-45 tunnel thruster on one of their vessels, the F/V Ocean Peace.”
The line of Brunvoll products that SMI offers includes tunnel thrusters for vessels powered as low as 100 horsepower to as high as 6,700 horsepower. The Brunvoll retractable azimuth combi thruster that SMI offers is used to keep longliners on their gear when hauling, and the Brunvoll website notes that in an emergency, a vessel once made it back to port using only its azimuth thruster.
SMI also sells the reduction gears Brunvoll produces for vessels up to 40,000 horsepower, and Brunvoll’s controllable-pitch propellers for vessels 1,300 to 26,800 horsepower. “We are selling more of those now,” says Torres.
Torres notes SMI does more than just sell the equipment. “We sell, install, commission, and service,” he says. Like many other suppliers of equipment to the Alaska fleet, from late October when the big Alaska boats return to Seattle until they leave again in January, SMI technicians are busy installing new equipment and servicing existing units.
