Case studies

Fishing goes back to the future

Switching from trawling to anchor seining has cut Motueka skipper Ken Franks' fuel bill by more than half.

Since converting his 15m boat the FV Vanguard from a trawler to an anchor seiner in 2008 his catches sizes have increased too, and the quality of the fish is better. That means higher profit margins for Mr Franks at a time when rising fuel prices are forcing others in the industry to think about tying their boats up.

Mr Franks is now encouraging other trawler skippers to do the same.

At Kopua Holiday Park in Raglan they can't always guarantee that the surf is up, but they can offer the sun on tap. That's because they've installed a large scale solar water heating system on their main kitchen and ablution block that delivers plenty of hot water when it's needed.

This farm installed a heat exchange system - it extracts the heat from the waste water and uses it to pre-warm the incoming water in the dairy shed. It reduces energy use as less energy is needed to heat each new batch of water to the 85 degrees celsius required for the next wash.

Monitoring has shown that the system is on target to achieve an annual energy saving of 30%. That equates to a cut in CO2 emissions of about one tonne a year.

A suggestion to trial biodiesel on one of Ocean Fisheries’ trawlers has seen the Lyttelton firm so convinced by the benefits of the fuel it has progressively changed all its vessels to run on biodiesel blends - including its delivery trucks – and commission a $2 million dollar trawler that runs exclusively on biodiesel.