Northern Ireland's fishing industry has embraced the "Net" before its southern counterparts - and that's not some "new" fishing gear. The Co Down port of Ardglass made history this week when it hosted the first official electronic fish auction on this island.
More than a dozen Ardglass fishing vessels landed their prawn catches in to be auctioned electronically at 7 a.m on Tuesday. The new system represents a £1 million (€1.27 million) investment by a Northern consortium, Halster Fish Sales, and it plans to extend it to Kilkeel and Portavogie, as part of the Pan European Fish Auction System. Controlled from a central server in Brussels, the system allows buyers to bid in "real time" for fish landed by Northern Ireland vessels. It maintains the "auction clock", being a development of electronic flower auctions initiated in the Netherlands. It allows buyers to buy fish online at auctions across Europe, while producers and their agents can reach buyers and processors in many countries.
The company's Irish agent, Mr Niall Duffy, is a Co Cork-based former fisherman and photographer with more than 15 years' experience in the marine sector. He was appointed earlier this year by Pan European Fish Auction headquarters in Brussels, and has been in contact with fish buyers, producers and co-operatives the length and breadth of the island over the past three months.
Mr Duffy knows how fishermen can be taken advantage of when landings are high, and believes the online system is very transparent.
It allows producers and buyers to co-ordinate supply and demand for a range of species, from hake to orange roughy.
Mr Matt Murphy of Halster Fish Sales told The Irish Times that outlets had already been identified in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, and the company's multi-lingual office was trained to pursue bids online. Apart from transparency, the system allows for grading, weighing, constant temperature control and for far greater flexibility in terms of landing.
Currently, the landings of most vessels are geared towards market times, but electronic auctioning means they can land at any stage - if not also governed by tide. The system has the backing of the North's governing body for the three ports, which voiced support for it in its corporate plan, published earlier this year.
It had studied electronic auctioning in the Scottish port of Troon, and identified it as the way forward for the future. It predicted opposition from local salesmen and processors, but stressed that increased access to the market had to be a central component of fishing port evolution.
Mr Duffy said potential buyers in the Republic would be studying progress in Ardglass to see if the system took off.
