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GAEL FORCE MARINE


30 years of Scottish Aquaculture


A force to be reckoned with G


ael Force Marine has its roots in the Hebrides, where founder and Chair- man, Stewart Graham began his one man operation making fishing creels in 1983. The company relocated to Inverness in 1990, where Stewart expanded the business – initially to source and supply all the ancillary equip- ment required for creel fishing and, subse- quently, to provide a comprehensive range of products for commercial fisheries. The business grew rapidly and, as a logical progression, Gael Force was soon also supplying Scotland’s emerging aquaculture sector with protective clothing, rope, chain and other items of marine equipment.


This trend was compounded when Gael Force acquired Seaboard Anchors in 1998 – an acquisition which took the company into high level contact with all the key aquaculture operators, through the design and supply of complex high load, multi-point mooring sys- tems for fish cages.


The company took a further significant step into the aquaculture sector when the as- sets of Taylor Marine were acquired in 2000 to form Gael Force Engineering Division – manufacturers of the then revolutionary SeaCap feed barge, which met the industry’s new emphasis on operational efficiency, fish husbandry and environmental management. The circular Seacap design won the John Logie Baird Award for innovation and revolution- ised automated feed barge design by offering controlled, intelligent feeding combined with the ability to operate in more exposed areas than traditional steel barges. Indeed, one of the most exposed sites to be farmed anywhere in the world – off the Faroe Islands – has been using a SeaCap barge without any problems for over eight years.


In 2006, the company split into Gael Force Aqua, Gael Force Marine Equipment and Gael Force Properties, in order for each company to focus on core business run by separate management teams. Donnie Morrison was appointed Sales Director and John Offord as the Production Director in Gael Force Aqua. In 2009 Stewart Graham decided that he would take a 2-year sabbatical from the company he founded 26 years ago to sail around the world along with his wife. This saw David Guthrie, who has extensive knowledge and experience of marine industries in the UK, Europe and the USA, taking the helm as the new MD.


Since the acquisition of Seaboard Anchors and the further expansion of the moorings


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division, Gael Force has moored farm sites all over the world – from Martinique in the Caribbean to Italy in the Mediterranean – and is currently the preferred supplier to many of the major fish farming companies operating on mainland Scotland, Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. Gael Force also moored one of the most distant offshore sites – a testament to their expertise – when the University of New Hampshire decided to set up a test farm 10km off the coast of the United States.


Gael Force maintains a running programme to develop mooring products and constantly seeks to improve the design, quality and per- formance of mooring systems. The company has also worked very closely with Portugal’s oldest and most respected rope manufactur- ers, Olivera SA, to develop and manufacture specialist mooring ropes for the fish farming industry.


This focus on product development is ongo-


ing, with the company now looking at new and innovative plastic cables for mooring grids which do not suffer from the stretch of traditional ropes and could be of great benefit when the accuracy of mooring rope and grid square lengths is critical. Further endorsement of the reputation of Gael Force as a world leader in mooring system design and know- how has been the recently completed manu- facture of three innovative 400-tonne floatable gravity-based anchors (FGBA’s) which the New Jersey-based marine renewables company Ocean Power Technology use to moor their wave energy device, PowerBuoy, in the wild waters of the Pentland Firth.


To date Gael Force has manufactured more than 50 concrete feed barges for the aquac- ulture industry – both circular SeaCaps and, more recently, the new square-sided SeaMate. The company is currently working on a further two SeaMate barges, making a total of 56 con- crete marine structures built since 2000. The feed barge range comprises the 100T, 200T and 250T SeaCap and the 35, 220T and 400T SeaMate. The first Seamate 400T was built for a Norwegian customer and delivered to Austevoll in Norway at the end of 2009, while the second will be delivered in August to the new Lakeland Marine site, at Carradale on the Argyll peninsula.


With many years offshore mooring and feed barge building experience Gael Force is at the forefront of groundbreaking offshore fish farm developments and the company currently has plans on the drawing board for a 600–800


www.fishfarmer-magazine.com


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