ScaleAQ eyes Scottish sales with innovative new pen collar

A new all-plastic fish pen collar that salmon sector supplier ScaleAQ believes is ideally suited to the Scottish sector will be on show at Aquaculture UK in Glasgow next week.

The Norwegian company’s new Milda collar is designed for calmer – or as the name suggests, ‘milder’, sites - and has plastic clamps rather than the steel clamps used on its Frøyaringen collars for high energy sites or the plastic and steel hybrid clamps used on its Frøyaringen PL collars.

No welded stoppers

Significantly, says ScaleAQ, the Milda doesn’t have welded stoppers on the pipes to keep the clamps (also called brackets) in place, as the company says welds weaken the plastic’s structure and introduce a risk of breakage.

Instead, ScaleAQ uses a pipe-in-pipe design, in which “distance pipes” are slid over a slightly narrower inner pipe to act as spacers for the clamps and take the tangential load from mooring bridles. A three-part bushing fits under and along the sides of each clamp to protect it from being rubbed by the distance pipes.

A 3.4-metre demonstration section of a Milda collar fitted with three clamps and 500mm-diameter pipe spacers over a 450mm-diameter interior pipe will be on display at Aquaculture UK.

A test version of the Milda pen has been in use with Mowi in Norway for a year and has satisfied requirements from fish biologists that the collar’s pipe-in-pipe design doesn’t prevent it being properly cleaned between farming cycles.

Technical certification organisation DNV has certified that the collar meets the Norwegian technical standard, NS 9415:2021.

Savings on maintenance

In terms of capital cost, there is little difference between Milda and ScaleAQ’s steel-reinforced collars, says ScaleAQ, but farmers can make a considerable saving in reduced maintenance costs over the lifetime of the pen. The collar is guaranteed for 20 years but could last twice that time, says the company.

“Milda is good option for any farmer that has a low energy site and would like a pen that is 100% plastic,” said ScaleAQ’s global service director, Conor Foster.

“It is built with the goal of being a pen with 100% recyclable plastic. We are not there yet but soon will be.

“It is also a low maintenance pen and has very few parts that can wear.”