Fisheries Challenge winners visit Thorfish ltd.
The winning team of this year's Fisheries Challenge visited Thorfish ltd., the challenge 2016 partner, on Monday. They were greeted by Thorfish staff and management in the town of Grindavík in the South of Iceland and introduced to all aspects of the operation.
The team had already learnt a good deal about Thorfish ltd. as a part of the competition but visiting the company gave them "a whole new perspective", as they described it. In March, the team will head to Boston, USA, to take part in the largest seafood expo in North America.
In late January, students from different academic departments in Reykjavik University formed teams to compete in the second Fisheries Challenge, a collaboration between the University and Fisheries Iceland. The competition is set up as a two-day non-stop training camp where the teams come up with the best solution for a specific problem and then present them before a panel of industry professionals and academics. This year's assignment was to help Thorfish ltd. become the most environmentally sustainable fisheries operation in Iceland, following outlines from the Paris agreement. The Icelandic fisheries industry has already taken great measures to achieve environmental sustainability.
Guðjón Smári Guðmundsson, Ingi Svavarsson, Hjálmar Óskarsson, Margrét Lilja Hjaltadóttir and Hrönn Vilhjálmsdóttir form this year's winning team. They come from three different academic departments: applied engineering, business and law. They, for instance, suggested that Thorfish ltd. followed the ISO 14001 environmental management standard which means setting ambitious goals and committing to continuous improvement.
See the team's winning presentation
About the Fisheries Challenge
The Fisheries Challenge is a competition for aspiring experts in environmental issues, marketing, software, technology and logistics to prove their capabilities and talent by developing solutions for the seafood industry. This year's concerns the global challenge of climate change, following the landmark agreement in Paris last December. The challenge took place at Reykjavik University 21-25 January 2016 and was open to all RU students.
The event is organised in co-operation between Reykjavik University and Fisheries Iceland with the support of Icelandair and The US Embassy in Iceland.
See more photos from the visit to Thorfish on the RU Facebook page
