Member Article

Contracts Success For Succorfish With Inshore Vessel Monitoring System

A North East technology business has sailed off with dozens of contracts around the UK in the first quarter of the year for its state-of-the-art tracking device.

At the end of 2021, Succorfish became the only provider in the north of England to successfully complete the Marine Management Organisation’s extensive approvals process for Inshore Vessel Monitoring Systems (I-VMS), which are used to monitor the location of fishing boats within the UK’s coastal waters.

The North Tyneside-headquartered firm’s SC2 Gen 2 iVMS system provides an easy-to-use, cloud-based monitoring platform that is accessible from tablets, desktop computers or a smart phone app via satellite and Bluetooth.

And just a few months on from the MMO approval, the system is now being used on vessels operating from more than 30 coastal locations around England, Wales and The Isle of Man, with further contracts already in the pipeline.

The system gives crews of boats that are 12m or less in length accurate guidance on whether their vessels are in an area in which they’re permitted to fish.

It also provides the fishing authorities with real time data on whether vessels should or shouldn’t be in particular areas, enabling appropriate action to be taken against any that are potentially fishing unlawfully in restricted conservation zones.

Customers also receive free cloud-based monitoring software delivered by the Succorfish Enterprise grade, SAAS platform which enables them to historically see all fishing tracking data, while the Succorfish device is also the only one that is fully integrated into the MMO’s Government Gateway software.

Founded in 2008, Succorfish is already a world leader in its field and specialises in fisheries and security applications.

It has a 20-strong in-house design, software engineering, development and customer service team which manages all aspects of clients’ technology requirements, and also provides bespoke training programmes where required.

Its hardware is designed and manufactured in North Shields, with stock held in fishing ports across the UK, and it is also being successfully used by customers as far afield as Norway, Malta, Lebanon, the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Harry Cook, fisheries project manager at Succorfish, says: “The response from businesses in the inshore fishing industry to the SC2 Gen 2 over the first quarter of the year has been extremely encouraging and we’re especially pleased to see it being adopted by customers right around the English and Welsh coastline.

“The feedback from clients has been extremely positive, both about the efficiency with which our teams have been carrying out installations on their vessels and how effectively the system is doing the job that both they and maritime authorities need it to do.

“The SC2 Gen 2 is living up to the standards that we designed it to reach and is enabling us to quickly fulfil the commercial potential that we saw in this market, with word of mouth helping to bring even more business development opportunities our way this year.

“It is mature technology that we know provides the usability, reliability and technical specifications that customers need, and the results that we’re seeing back up our belief that our system and the services that go with it are the best on the market.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Julian Christopher .