New production facility at Far Eastern Fisheries Technical Center goes into operation, adding 3,600 square meters of production space

Artyom Shevchenko, General Director of the Far Eastern Fisheries Technical Center (АО «Дальрыбтехцентр»), said in an interview published on October 21, 2026, that the company's new production building was fully commissioned ahead of Fisherman's Day, with pre-processing capacity and portioning equipment moved into the new building and production space increased by 3,600 square meters.

Shevchenko said this is the largest fixed-asset renewal since the company moved from central Vladivostok to what was then the remote Churkin district in the early 1970s; in the past 30 to 40 years there had been no change of comparable scale in the company's history, and it is a landmark event in terms of both investment and construction scale.

The new building project is not an isolated undertaking. Shevchenko said the company began a comprehensive overhaul of the plant in 2014, starting with building a team, purchasing machine tools and renovating existing workshops, proceeding in stages, and later concluded that conditions were in place to build a new facility. The main goal of the project was to bring all engineering, technical and administrative staff under one roof to improve efficiency, while expanding pre-processing production that had become increasingly cramped in the old workshops and optimizing in-plant logistics. There was also an architectural consideration: the company is located next to the Golden Bridge, and the plant site is clearly visible from central Vladivostok, so instead of a gray sandwich-panel box, it sought to enhance the city's waterfront facade.

On personnel, Shevchenko said the company has built a cohesive core team since 2013–2014, and in recent years has adopted a practice in which large numbers of engineers and mechanics go directly to the fishing grounds. Previously only two or three people were sent to Kamchatka for commissioning work during the peak fishing season; now large groups travel specifically for this. This shift has moved communication between the company and fishermen from the leadership and commercial departments down to the level of technical specialists: when complex technical problems arise at the fishing site, the company can directly contact the center's engineers for rapid handling. He said the important task now is to retain these key personnel, so that long-serving employees do not find their work tedious and can continue to participate in new projects and have room for career growth.

On automation and digitalization, Shevchenko compared it to the emergence of the internet and search engines in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and believes that in 5 to 7 years efficient operation of the company will be inseparable from artificial intelligence. He said programs are already being developed that use computer vision to automatically identify fish species; optical video analysis systems have long been able to measure the length and weight of raw material, and AI can go further in sorting, stacking and similar operations, with the collection and processing of such analytical data becoming routine. Another application of AI is service support and repair: amid a shortage of technical talent, AI can serve as an operating consultant, testing equipment, identifying operating errors and giving personnel step-by-step instructions to troubleshoot faults; digital assistants can also take over a large amount of administrative work, freeing people from manually compiling records and reports. He believes this will become standard in 7 to 10 years.

On the company's positioning, Shevchenko said the strategy is unchanged: the main task is to provide Russian fishermen and processing companies with the equipment they need to the greatest extent possible, keep pace with the times, meet industry needs entirely with domestic capabilities without bringing in foreign suppliers; in a broader sense, the goal is for any aquaculture and fish processing project to be carried out entirely within Russia, with domestic solutions not only competing with foreign products in response speed, cost and reliability but surpassing them. As for the plant itself, he hopes it will become a modern, high-tech enterprise with decent wages, a team full of new ideas and continuous development, further consolidating the ties with fishermen built up over decades.

On competition, Shevchenko said competition from Asian partners remains intense. In the ship sector, problems remain: large numbers of orders for modernization and refitting of the fishing fleet are still going to foreign shipyards, and resolving this will take time. But in the company's main field — onshore processing — the situation has fundamentally changed: Western and Asian manufacturers of portioning and fish processing equipment were once household names thanks to their ubiquity, but today it can be said with confidence that Russia has alternatives at least on par with world standards; under sanctions restrictions, difficulties in cross-border payments and rising logistics costs, domestic plants can offer the market more favorable and safer terms. He said monitoring of the world market and professional exchanges will not be interrupted, and at the end of October this year he plans to visit an exhibition in Qingdao to learn about the latest achievements in automation and record best practices. He believes the business community not only believes in Russian machinery manufacturing but actively supports its development by proposing ideas and complex and interesting tasks; today Far Eastern onshore plants mainly use Russian equipment, which is a major shared victory.