Rolls-Royce to moor the world’s first offshore fish farm rig

Rolls-Royce has signed a contract for the construction and delivery of an eight point mooring system to the world’s first offshore fish farm installation being developed for Ocean Farming AS, a subsidiary of the SalMar Group in Norway, the Company said Wednesday in a press release.

The equipment will be used to secure the installation to the seabed at Frohavet, off the coast of central Norway. The 68 meter high rig will have a diameter of 110 meters and a volume of 250.000 cubic meters.

SalMar is one of the world’s largest and most efficient producers of farmed salmon. The growth of the farmed fish industry means that new locations, offering good biological conditions for fish stocks, are being explored in deeper water. However moving further offshore also requires new technology.

Asbjørn Skaro, Rolls-Royce, Executive Vice President – Deck Machinery, said: "This contract win shows how years of experience providing sophisticated mooring and deck machinery solutions in some of the world's most difficult sea conditions can be applied in other areas of the maritime economy today and for the future. The technical solutions for SalMar’s pilot installation is based on the state-of-the-art technology Norwegian industry has to offer from both fields of aquaculture and offshore oil and gas."

The eight point mooring system to be delivered by Rolls-Royce includes monitoring, fairleads, connectors and subsea load sensing system.

Rolls-Royce has signed a contract with the Chinese Institute of Marine and Offshore Enginering, and the new semi-submersible rig will be constructed at Qingdao Wuchuan Heavy Industry Co. Ltd in China. It is designed by Global Maritime in Norway, and the pilot ocean fish farm is planned to be completed by the second half of 2017.

Rolls-Royce is a world leader in marine solutions, providing products, service and expertise to more than 30,000 vessels in the offshore, merchant, naval surface and submarine markets. It designs ships and its product range includes propulsion systems featuring diesel engines and gas turbines, propellers, thrusters and water jets. Rolls-Royce also provides manoeuvring and stabilising systems and deck machinery. The company employs over 39,000 skilled people, including 11,000 engineers, in offices, manufacturing and service facilities in over 50 countries.