New fish skinners tick all the right boxes

Cretel makes food processing equipment as well as washing and drying systems for various sectors of the food industry. Their food systems are designed to process beef, fish and pork products. The washing and drying systems are deployed in industries including dairy, meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables, confectionary, and pharmaceuticals. The aim is to assist and enhance the work of producers while ensuring that important health and safety criteria are met.

ABelgian company that manufactures all of its technology in house Cretel, a part of the ATS Group, has been creating food processing technology and washing and drying equipment for fty years. e company has just released a new generation of its automatic sh skinner that minimizes waste, promotes safety and hygiene, and is designed to be cleaned with ease.

Next generation fish skinners offer increased reliability

e company’s food processing equipment for sh includes sh skinners, sh scalers, vacuum packers, and pin bone removers. At the 2023 Seafood Expo Global, Guy Persyn, the company’s division manager, talked about the new product releases that the company had launched within the last year. e tabletop skinner and the standalone, manual skinner were improved in a variety of ways. And last year, Cretel relaunched its automatic skinner. e company is generally cautious when designing new models, says Mr Persyn, because it wanted to ensure that only the aspects of their technology that could be improved were changed. Our customers know that they can depend on our products for twenty to thirty years, so we wanted to ensure our new machines were just as reliable and had the same longevity, he says. At the company they often say that their customers “aren’t just buying these machines for themselves, they’re buying them for their grandchildren.” e reliability of the company’s products is one of the characteristics most valued by its customers, so when developing the new skinner models, caution was taken to ensure the machine was as robust as its predecessor.

Mr Persyn explained that compared to Cretel’s original models, the company’s new sh skinners show increases in capacity, hygiene, functionality, and cleanability. e F460A, for example, was designed with easy use in mind. e new model allows for easy adjustment of thickness for silver, regular, and deep sh skinning. And, its design prioritizes safety and simple maintenance, making it very user friendly. During the redesigning process, engineers improved the hygiene of the skinners by introducing a new surface treatment which minimizes bacteria on the skinners. e idea behind this development was to encourage and assist sh producers in adhering to sanitation and health standards and protocols. e improved cleanability enables even the inside parts of the machine to be cleaned without any di cult handling. e new machine is equipped to skin any kind of sh such as carp, salmon, tilapia, perch, bream, herring, pike, and snapper.

The link with ATS offers wide-ranging benefits

Reliability is a trait associated with all Cretel products. e parent company, ATS Group, is a multidisciplinary technology group which acquired Cretel in 2005. All of our technology is made inhouse under ATS, which helps to explain the consistency in our technology’s longevity, says Mr Persyn. Products from the other business line, the production of large-scale washing and drying systems, are sold to a wide variety of industries, including the sh industry. ese products include di erent systems of washers and dryers which are made speci cally for the crates, bins, containers, and racks that are used by the sh processing industry. e company o ers these products in di erent sizes and speci cations to cater to the needs of di erent sorts of shing and processing companies. Cretel’s customers produce all sorts of sh and the equipment is designed to work well with a variety of sh species. e engineering technology that the company has access to through its relationship with ATS enables Cretel systems to go beyond just washing and drying. For example, the tuna waste washing system involves machines which wash large containers in a tunnel washer. ese are then stacked by machine and nally automatically stored in a warehouse. Another example is a special robot that can adjust racks for pallets and containers and then places them in the washing machine. When the clean containers come out of the washing system, the robot begins to ll them again. Finally, there is also a spin dryer which thoroughly dries the containers, after which robots transport them to conveyor belts. All of the company’s technologies, including the robots, are developed and made in-house, emphasized Mr Persyn.

Availability of spare parts affected by geopolitics

Mr Persyn also commented on the impacts that the current global setting has had on the company. Even with Covid, the current geopolitical

Cretel by ATS

Langerbruggekaai 15

9000 Ghent, Belgium Tel: +32 9 376 95 95 info@cretel.com www.cretel.com

Division Manager Mechatronics: Guy Persyn

Products: Fish processing equipment (fish skinner, situation, and in ation, both the costs and sales of their machines have remained quite stable. e company sells its machines primarily in Europe, but they are also sold in Asia and in various parts of North America. e ability to sell products was largely una ected by Covid or any of the other recent crises even considering the vast global span of the company’s customers. e most notable impact has been the availability of spare parts. In the past, this was not an issue but as a result of the recent geopolitical crisis, Mr. Persyn says that their inventory of spare parts is less reliable. e problem with spare parts is that customers often wait to buy them until they are needed immediately, leaving the company with very little time to prepare for their customers’ needs. In years past, customers have depended upon Cretel for the spare parts they might need, often waiting until they became available through Cretel. But there is also a limit to customers’ patience and so also instances where they have turned elsewhere. e lack of spare parts is not as pronounced as it was at the start of the pandemic and Mr Persyn is optimistic that as the geopolitical situation continues to stabilize, the availability of spare parts will improve further.

Nora Goodman, Euro sh, nora@euro sh.dk

fish scaler, pinbone remover) Washing and drying systems (tunnel washers, cabin washers, rack and trolley washers, industrial drying systems)

Production: Belgium

Markets: Europe, Asia, North America