Our history begins in 1911, when Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich Shakhovsky built the first crab-fish cannery in Tafuin Bay of Peter the Great Bay
The production then consisted of a wooden workshop-shed surrounded by outbuildings, and several sailing scows that carried out coastal fishing. The harvested crab was canned and exported to England, Japan and America. With the advent of Soviet power, a new page in the life of the factory opens: in 1925 it is part of Dalgosrybtrest, the first independent company in the fishing industry.
With the advent of Soviet power, a new page in the life of the factory opens: in 1925 it is part of Dalgosrybtrest, the first independent company in the fishing industry.
The heyday of production is associated just with this period: a list of fishing species is expanding (Iwashi, sardine, smelt, flounder, goby, pollock, crab), catch volumes are growing, the grouping of ships is increasing.
But the Great Patriotic War makes its own adjustments. Most of the factory’s male staff goes off to war, and the women of the village under the slogan “Everything for the front, everything for the Victory!” take over the fish processing in three shifts. Children after school hours work on an equal basis with their mothers.
All products of the company (canned food, salted, dried and frozen fish) are delivered to the front.
The factory team for labor merits is awarded several times with the challenge Red Banner of the USSR Defense Committee, after which it is assigned to the company for eternal storage.
The post-war years are a period of increasing turnovers and exploring new horizons. New powerful diesel vessels are being built, and Tafuin captains are the first in history to introduce into permanent practice the methods of expeditionary fishing, which are now actively used by fishermen all over the world. The technical base is strengthened by its own ship repair enterprise (the current Livadia Repair Shipyard).
In 1954, the company’s fleet for the first time started night fishing for mackerel, and in 1963, in the South Kuriles region, it began the catch of such an important fishing species as saury. For the achieved results, development of new fishing areas and expansion of a range of products, the company's team is listed in the Golden Book of Honor of Glavdalvostokrybprom.
For this period, the fish factory changed several names from S. Nadibaidze Seine Vessel Fleet Base to the current Yuzhmorrybflot, and by the 1980s it became one of the largest fish-canning factory in the Far East.
After the development, the hard period of perestroika began.
Vessels were being sold at rock-bottom prices and cut for metal scrap, quay walls were broken by storms and the factory was practically shut down.
In 2014, the floating town and the fishing giant KRKPB (floating crab and fish canning factory) Vsevolod Sibirtsev became a part of the holding. It was bought from a foreign company that planned to reoutfit it as a hotel and brought back to Russia. One of the world’s largest floating factories remained at the time became the flagship of Dobroflot fishing fleet and immediately set out on a one-year voyage to produce fish products right in the open sea.
2014 – Dobroflot started its own can-making production business in Bolshoy Kamen, Primorsky region. The factory’s capacities allow to produce up to 200M cans per year, which fully covers the holding’s in-house needs and gives an opportunity to fulfil third-party orders for can manufacture.
In 2015, Russian fishers returned to the World Ocean. Dobroflot carried out a strategically important project for the industry for the first time since the USSR, which was the receipt of saury from fishing Japanese and Taiwanese companies in the World Ocean for its subsequent deep processing on floating factory Vsevolod Sibirtsev and sale of fish products on the Russian market. The project was prepared for more than three years and discussed on the governmental level with Rosrybolovstvo (Federal Agency for Fishery).
In 2017, after two years of successful production business of deep processing of saury raw materials received from Japanese fishers, this business was recognized as illegal by customs authorities. The state regulator made a decision to suspend the saury production in the World Ocean and blocked supplies of Russian fish cans to the Russian market.
Due to this situation, the President of Russia gave the Russian Government three orders, including the widely known order of 21.06.2017 No. Пр-1201 that emphasizes: “to ensure unimpeded production and access to the Russian shore of fish products produced by Russian vessels in the open part f the World Ocean”.
In spite of all the President’s instructions, in 2022, the issue of determining the status of fish products produced in the open part of the World Ocean still remains open, and the President’s order is not duly fulfilled.
2016 year: Dobroflot’s reefers started regular supplies of wild Far-Eastern fish to European regions along the Northern Sea Route.
During the last 7 years, Dobroflot has been making regular annual voyages along the Northern Sea Route. Today, the company’s many years of experience confirm that with proper organization of the process, the use of the Northern Sea Route is the most profitable and convenient way to carry Pacific fish to Western regions of the country directly from the fishing areas.
2016 year: Dobroflot’s reefers started regular supplies of wild Far-Eastern fish to European regions along the Northern Sea Route.
During the last 7 years, Dobroflot has been making regular annual voyages along the Northern Sea Route. Today, the company’s many years of experience confirm that with proper organization of the process, the use of the Northern Sea Route is the most profitable and convenient way to carry Pacific fish to Western regions of the country directly from the fishing areas.
2016 year: Dobroflot’s reefers started regular supplies of wild Far-Eastern fish to European regions along the Northern Sea Route.
During the last 7 years, Dobroflot has been making regular annual voyages along the Northern Sea Route. Today, the company’s many years of experience confirm that with proper organization of the process, the use of the Northern Sea Route is the most profitable and convenient way to carry Pacific fish to Western regions of the country directly from the fishing areas.
2016 year: Dobroflot’s reefers started regular supplies of wild Far-Eastern fish to European regions along the Northern Sea Route.
During the last 7 years, Dobroflot has been making regular annual voyages along the Northern Sea Route. Today, the company’s many years of experience confirm that with proper organization of the process, the use of the Northern Sea Route is the most profitable and convenient way to carry Pacific fish to Western regions of the country directly from the fishing areas.
2016: by efforts of Dobroflot, fishing of iwashi (Japanese pilchard) in Russia was renewed. After the 20-year pause, healthy, tender and delicious sardines returned to Russians’ dining tables. It required building special fishing equipment from scratch, reoutfitting fishing ships and teaching ship crews the aspects of fishing new bioresources for three years.
In 2018, Dobroflot bought and completely restored the dilapidated Khomyakovsky Cold Storage Facility in Tula region. The investment project was implemented under the cooperation agreement with the Government of Tula region. The fish and seafood processing factory in Tula is currently running full force producing high-quality semi-finished goods from Alaska Pollock, cod and squid. Production facilities allow producing up to 8.5K tons of fish products per year. The factory provides jobs for over 200K locals.
2018: Dobroflot won the Russian National award “Merchandize of the Year”. This became a historical event for the whole industry as it was the first time in 20 years of Merchandize of the Year award existence when a fish cans brand became a winner.
On April 30, 2019, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin awarded the Dobroflot employee Sergey Antonov with the highest honor, the Hero of Labor of Russia, for achievements in restoring the industry of iwashi fishing in Russia. Today, S.I. Antonov is the only Hero of Labor fisherman in Russia.
Thanks to Sergey Antonov's titanic efforts and remarkable feat of labor, purse seining of Japanese pilchard was renewed in Russia. This is the only option of fishing, which allows to keep Japanese pilchard unharmed. Seine net is an expensive and complicated fishing gear, requiring from the fishermen crews at sea not only knowledge, experience and skills, but — what is more important — considerable physical and organizational efforts, coordinated work of the whole deck crew of the fishing vessel.
In the mid of 2010-s, fishermen in the Far East tried to arrange Japanese pilchard fishing with the traditional fishing gear - trawl. However, Japanese pilchard is very soft and delicate fish. Its percentage of fat reaches 28% of the total fish weight, and it makes Japanese pilchard the leader in Omega-3 content among all commercial fish. Such fish shall not be caught by ordinary trawls as standard trawls jam, crumple and fracture it. Moreover, Japanese pilchard becomes suffocated in the trawl very quickly, and the raw fish product obtained this way is suitable only for technical purposes, such as processing into fishmeal and fat.
Within the years of Soviet Union, fishermen used special net for sardines fishing. The seine net fishing allows keeping sardines in better shape and quality for canned and preserved fish production. Such nets allow surrounding a school of fish and closing the purse seine net valves under it. Then the fish is gently pulled aboard the vessel and pumped out of the seine net. Under this type of fishing sardines remains in the sea water surrounded by seine net (like in an aquarium) and being alive until the moment of processing.
In the Soviet Union, when sardines became a kind of popular gourmet food, floating plants were used to processed sardines directly next to seine net, taking live fish on board. The exact combination of two complex technological and manufacturing processes — seine net fishing and processing of sardines in the sea onboard of the floating fish factory Vsevolod Sibirtsev — allows the products under Dobroflot brand to bring to the consumer that taste of sardines which was so appreciated in the past. It was that type of fishery that Sergey Antonov had restored after many years of oblivion. He proved that fishing of sardines is possible, and therefore sent a message for other Far Eastern fishermen.
The purse seine net is a unique engineering structure 1000 meters long and more than 200 meters high. The weight of even a dry seine net exceeds 32 tons. This method of fishing requires not only the fishermen's knowledge, experience and skills, but — what is of main importance — considerable physical and organizational efforts, and well-coordinated work of the whole deck crew of the fishing vessel. It is not surprising that for 25 years of absence of Japanese pilchard in the Russian seas, all iwashi fishing equipment was destroyed and the fishing skills were forgotten. A whole generation of fishermen grew who never saw or fished iwashi.
In 2018 – 2019, Sergey Ivanovich Antonov, the head of Industrial Equipment and Rigging department of Dobroflot, found old drawings, calculated parameters and requirements to modern materials, with his own hands tied the first nets, bundles, snood and ropes into complicated systems of seine nets.
For three years, Sergey Antonov went to sea and taught fishermen how to fish iwashi with seine nets. In order to imagine the difficulty of the task of setting (casting) and selecting a seine net, one should know its specifications: weight is around 30 tons, area of all nets is 22K square meters, one-time harvest for one successful casting in 2017 on STR (refrigerating trawler/seiner) Kalinovka under the supervision of Sergey Antonov was 282 tons of iwashi!
At the beginning of organization of purse seiner fishing, Sergey Antonov was the only specialist in the Far East who had the experience and skills of using purse seine. Among the seiners’ crew members, few people believed this initiative would be a success and Sergey Ivanovich experienced considerably psychological pressure from the crew members, which he had to overcome. Thanks to Sergey Antonov, Russia regained the most promising fishing sector, but most importantly, Sergey Ivanovich brought back Russian favorite fish to the dining tables – Pacific sardines iwashi.
2019. In advanced special economic zone Bolshoy Kamen, shore production facility for Alaska Pollock fillet processing Novy Mir (“New World”) was built, which was outfitted with the most advanced processing equipment in the region. The factory was built under the “quotas in exchange for investments” law. The financial partner was VTB Bank, with the total investment of 1.7B rubles.
In 2020, Dobroflot won the contest “National Brand”. According to the opinion of most Russian that participated in the massive poll, Dobroflot canned goods were the best in the country.
On April 19, 2021, the historical record was set for the whole fish industry. During the fishing expedition in 2020 – 2021, the crew of the floating factory Vsevolod Sibirtsev received on board and processed the unprecedented 64.6K tons of raw fish, outputted 22K tons of frozen products, produced over 56M cans of canned goods and preserves of fresh fish. It should be mentioned that processing of 64.6K tons of raw fish offshore is an absolute record for the whole history of domestic floating factories (since the USSR).
In 2022, Dobroflot built one of the biggest fish cold storage warehouses in the Far East. The construction of the cold storage facility was funded at the expense of loans from VTB Bank. The actual investments exceeded 1.3B rubles.
In September of 2022, Dobroflot built a cardboard package factory in advanced special economic zone Bolshoy Kamen. The factory outputting over 6M sq.m of corrugated cardboard packaging per year will not only make it possible to cover all the needs of the holding, but will also be able to supply cardboard packaging to other companies in the country. The investments in the organization of the business were around 500M rubles. For the production of corrugated cardboard packaging, the factory uses only Russian raw materials supplied by pulp and paper plants of Irkutsk region.
...пусть плавание будет добрым.
