August Sounder cable sold out - More on the way

Sounder cable sold out – more on the way
Dutch pelagic trawlers are among those using EuroData® sounder cable

One of the advantages of being part of a multi-national corporation are that skills and capabilities can be unexpectedly located. According to Jeroen Dorenbusch at IJmuiden Stores, an example of this came when they had been repeatedly asked if they could produce a sounder cable.

“We knew that parent company WireCo has the Camesa factory in Mexico which manufactures high-grade electro-mechanical cables for the oil and gas sectors,” he explained.

“These are used deep inside wells to connect sensor equipment to the surface. So when we were asked if we could make sounder cable for trawlers, it turned out that we could,” he said.

The first sea trials with the prototype EuroData® cable for connecting headline electronics on trawl gear to a fishing vessel’s wheelhouse were carried out in 2016 and 2017, with the product made commercially available for the first time at the end of last year, with single and coaxial versions available.

“We have stocked this in IJmuiden, and the first shipment we had from the factory in Mexico sold out quickly, with EuroData® cable supplied to Russia, Namibia, Las Palmas, Holland, France and Denmark for a variety of fishing vessels,” he said. “These include new vessels, such as Gitte Henning, and to a lot of our existing customers such as Moonsund trawlers working off West Africa and the Dutch pelagic fleet, as well as supplying our agents in various parts of the world. We thought that first container would last us six months, but it sold out in three. Now we have another shipment on the way that will be arriving in Rotterdam any day now – but half of that has already been earmarked for customers.”

He commented that a number of Russian customers have bought EuroData® sounder cable, and with the growth of the fleet there, Russia is becoming an increasingly interesting market.

‘We have been seeing increasing sales in Russia over the last twelve months,” he said. “We are seeing a real upswing in Russia, and we’re delighted to have the order for the warps for the first of the new generation of fishing vessels built there under the investment quotas mechanism, and we look forward to supplying them in the future.”