“The SME instrument offers Europe's brightest and boldest entrepreneurs the chance to step forward and request funding for breakthrough ideas with the potential to create entirely new markets or revolutionise existing ones. “(European Innovation Council).
Skaginn 3X was recently awarded the SME Instrument grant. The grant, which is funded by Horizon 2020, will play a key part in further developing SEASCANN, a cutting-edge onboard vision and grading technology, that will not only achieve highest product quality and help prevent overfishing but also create operational savings for it’s customers. The system has currently been integrated onboard 5 vessels in Iceland.
Need for improved equipment on board fishing vessels.
As greater emphasis is placed on effective and fast onboard fish sorting, Skaginn 3X has been developing an innovative onboard vision system designed not only to grade fish, but increase throughput and efficiency. “Current technology for onboard grading, sorting and tracking fish species is manual or semi-automatic and labour-intensive. The process is long and can lead to bottlenecks. This results in quality deterioration and fish discards as well as income losses for companies.” Says Ingólfur Árnason, CEO of Skaginn 3X.
SEASCANN achieves high profitability and full traceability
SEASCANN addresses the main issues faced by fishing vessels such as fish handling time, fish quality and productivity to allow fishing businesses to grow. Fishing vessels can expect a considerable increase in income with the integration of SEASCANN. The solution is integrated by a unique vision system that automatically grades fish (size, colour, quality and species) with an accuracy of up to 99%, and a cloud-based communication system that gathers and transfers real-time data to fisheries and other stakeholders such as land operators, fish processors and authorities. This process saves time for commercialisation between onboard and onshore personnel.
“SEASCANN allows for real-time data to be reported to land and helps our customers to promote their products and sell them before hitting shore.“ Ingólfur adds.
Sustainable fishing
With SEASCANN, reporting of fishing activities is more reliable and accurate than with the traditional reporting estimations on catch. Restrictions’ compliance can be monitored in real time, preventing overfishing.
“SEASCANN will have a huge, positive environmental and societal impact. It will provide European countries’ authorities the means to gather reliable and accurate fisheries-related data.“ says Ingólfur.
Skaginn 3X applied for the grant in early 2017. The process was long and challenging as the competition was of a very high standard. Approximately 1300 companies applied for the grant from various industries, of which 64 were awarded grants. Skaginn 3X received valuable input and assistance from Iceland based company Evris and Spanish company Inspiralia. Both companies specialize in project management on European, Nordic and EEA Grants projects.
For more information about SEASCANN and other innovative Skaginn 3X projects please visit our stand at Nor-Fishing (F-546)
