Caitlin Macdonald and Harry Fry at Mowi Scotland's new ROC in Stornoway.
Photo: Mowi Scotland.
In the latest edition of 'The Scoop,' its monthly newsletter, Mowi Scotland announced yesterday that its new Remote Operations Centre (ROC) in Stornoway is now up and running.
According to the publication, Loch Erisort and Loch Shell have been the first two farms to be fed directly from Stornoway's ROC since mid-October, but further farms in the Western Isles and Skye will be added in the coming months.
Coinciding with this opening, two new feeders have joined the Mowi team in Stornoway. They are Caitlin Macdonald and Connor Macaulay, who, according to 'The Scoop', spent time on local farms before the ROC was operational so they could experience firsthand what it takes to feed the stock.
The opening of the new remote fish-feeding operations centre has brought more changes to the Mowi Scotland workforce. Harry Fry, who was previously Manager of West Loch Tarbert, will now work at the ROC, where he will manage all aspects of feeding, as well as leading the BoBB (Back of Beyond Broadband, a hybrid internet service provider, enabling rural areas of Scotland with fibre fast internet access) and IT support.
In addition, Darren Stewart, previously at Loch Erisort, and Ross Alison, previously at Loch Seaforth, will be in charge of each shift within the ROC, ensuring consistent feeding practices across the region.
Just as this ROC will serve the Western Isles and Skye, in August last year, Mowi opened another remote fish-feeding operations centre at its Farm Office in Fort William, which began by controlling and feeding three farms, to later extended the service to all Mowi Scotland's seawater farms on the mainland.
As the company then explained, these ROCs allow for consistency in feeding regimes, ensuring that fish can be fed and monitored at all times, even in adverse weather conditions, when it would be too dangerous for on-site staff to feed the fish.
"We work closely with the staff on the farms to ensure everything is working as it should and if any issues arise at sea with the cameras. Constant communication between us helps keep everyone on the farms safe and our fish well looked after and healthy," then explained David Horne, who was the first employee to work at the Fort William ROC.
As Kris Wright, ROC team leader in Fort William, also mentioned at the time, as with any new system or infrastructure, when launching a remote operations centre, there are some learning curves along the way until everything is running at full capacity.
This is where Mowi Scotland's new ROC in Stornoway now finds itself. As the company has stated, it is now moving on to the next phase: upgrading communication lines through fibre and high-end relay links, in order to establish a stable network to operate and expand upon.
