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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 7
March 2006
Gloucester display auction goes high-tech
GLOUCESTER, MA - This winter the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction took a giant leap into the world of electronic trading, computerizing its auction system and adding two integrated automatic fish graders for vessel unloading.
The first step was the online auction, which was implemented in mid-January. Totally replacing the verbal auction, registered buyers instead use their passwords to log onto the auction’s web site, where the actual bidding and buying is done in real time.
The second step was installation of two Marel Classic Graders at the auction’s enclosed off-loading dock.
The new trading system is an indication of the Gloucester auction’s commitment and “absolute” confidence in the future of the fishing industry, according to Larry Ciulla, who co-owns and operates the approximately nine-year-old complex with his sister, Rose Marie, and their parents, Rose and Gus.
Keeping up with modern technology is key to survival, he said, and everyone will benefit: fishermen, buyers, and their customers.
“Our job at the auction for our suppliers is to get them the best markets for their fish and the best possible system to do the marketing,” he said. “With all of the looming restrictions, this system is now a necessity and can mean the difference of whether or not a fishing vessel or port survives.”
For buyers, the online auction offers both access to seafood without being on site and efficiency.
“Now a qualified buyer can log onto the auction’s web site using their password and buy fish there literally from anywhere in the world,” said Ciulla.
In addition to offsite participation, buyers can also go to the Gloucester facility, where each buyer’s desk in the auction room is equipped with a laptop computer.
Marel graders
The online auction and the new Marel graders were initially two different systems, Ciulla said.
“We did some interfacing with our people. We combined the two, and they are now compatible, and they talked to each other,” he said. “Our goal is to take (boat) unloading and bring it into the 21st century.”
Similar graders are already in use by the US beef and poultry and the European fishing industries. The Ciullas first heard about Marel at the Boston seafood show. The graders were shipped from Marel’s headquarters in Iceland.
“The graders will work on all species. They work best on bulk species like cod, haddock, and pollock,” said Ciulla.
Each grader can handle up to 180 fish per minute or around 20,000 pounds of groundfish an hour. Each of the machines can simultaneously handle two species with their different industry grades.
The old system involved lots of manual individual fish weighing, tote filling, labeling, and later data entry into the company’s computer system. It was possible to move about 12,000-13,000 pounds an hour from the vessel’s fish hold to the dock and then to the auction’s display cooler.
Under the new system, fish are still unloaded basket by basket from a boat’s hold and moved onto the wharf, where they are now dumped into a collection bin. From this entry point the computerized Marel system takes over. The fish move on a largely stainless steel assembly line-like device, which also has several polypropylene conveyor belts. They get rinsed and de-iced, measured, weighed, and sorted, and then, lastly, placed in totes to make up 300- to 1,000-pound lots.
The grader also prints out labels for each tote and enters the data about the fish into the auction’s computer system.
Workers still monitor aspects of the sorting process and off-load filled totes onto pallets to make up lots. The pallets are moved into the cooler.
Registered buyers can log onto the auction’s web site as soon as a boat’s catch is unloaded to get specifics on the species, size, and even number of fish per tote, for the next morning’s auction.
Online auction
The auction begins at 6 am and in advance of that starting time, buyers have had web site access to a total breakdown of the species available for sale.
Many buyers also send their own representatives to the auction very early in the morning to examine the fish. The Marel system doesn’t grade the fish for quality.
The whole auction is conducted onscreen, with no person involved. The lots of fish come up and buyers enter the bidding by holding down the space bar on the keyboard. As the price increases, bidders drop out until only one participant is left. That buyer wins the bid and has the chance to indicate how much of the lot he wants to take.
As the bidding is happening, buyers know how many participants there are, but they do not know whom they are bidding against.
Fishermen and boat owners, who are not present in the auction room, like that blind bidding aspect since they say it makes it more like a true auction. There is more competition since no one knows who is bidding. The sellers also continue to be able to turn down a bid.
For a person watching the online bidding for the first time, the electronic auction is fast-moving, exciting, and very intense. As much as 100,000 pounds of fish can be auctioned in an hour.
Buyers agree that it moves fast, but they also say the process is simple once you get used to it. And they appreciate the efficiency and being able to get fish moving into their processing operations early in the morning.
“Now I can buy right from my office by simply logging onto the auction’s web site and clicking on the catalog, which brings up all of the different lots of fish at the auction,” said Joe Mason, a fish buyer for Pigeon Cove Whole Foods in Gloucester.
Pigeon Cove, which supplies fresh and frozen seafoods to its parent company Whole Foods’ network of over 300 national and international supermarkets, still sends a worker to the auction’s display cooler to examine the fish before the auction.
Ciulla said the Gloucester auction currently has 25 buyers. He is hopeful the online, real-time buying and trading system will attract more participants – fishermen and buyers since there are benefits for both sides of the market equation.
For more information, call the auction at (978) 281-1544 or e-mail Ciulla at <gsdauction@verizon.net>.
Peter K. Prybot
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