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COMPANY PROFILE: NET Systems

Industry Anchors
Pacific Fishing is profiling companies with a deep legacy of support for the fishing industry, providing essential products, services, and innovation. In the spotlight this month: NET Systems

The net makers
A dedicated team at NET Systems turns out trawl gear for the North Pacific

by WESLEY LOY

In a forest alcove on the north end of Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride west of Seattle, sits the NET Systems campus.

It's a factory that buzzes pretty much around the clock, crafting trawl nets, trawl doors, codends, and other products vital to the success of North Pacific fishermen and other netting customers.

Nor'Eastern Trawl Systems, known as NET Systems, was founded in 1978. It's owned by Nichimo, a Japanese company involved in seafood sales, fishing nets, food-processing machinery, and more.

NET Systems employs 40-plus people, and looks to Alaska as its main customer.

Aside from the Bainbridge Island headquarters, the company has branches at Dutch Harbor and at Kodiak. NET Systems declined to disclose annual revenue or sales figures.

Inside the factory: Visitors to NET Systems are likely to be greeted by Brian Fujimoto, the company's affable spokesman.

"We are unique in this industry," he says, in that the company manufactures everything – netting as well as trawl doors.

NET Systems is the oldest trawl manufacturer on the West Coast, and the company moved into the purse seine sector five years ago, Fujimoto says.

During a July visit, he first takes us to an upstairs area where spools of fiber is wound onto metal cones. It's an intricate and proprietary operation – no photos allowed.

The company uses a variety of polyethylene fibers including the Dyneema brand from the Dutch company DSM, billed as "the world's strongest fiber."

The cones are taken down into the heart of the factory, which has a total of nine looms of various sizes.

We climb up to marvel at the largest of the looms in operation. Fujimoto describes it as "our newest, fastest, badass machine."

The cones are loaded into bobbins for weaving, and the loom creates quite a din. From above, the loom looks something like a huge sundial.

The loom is turning out Dyneema Ultra Cross netting. Ultra Cross is described as "Nichimo's own unique knotless webbing … used by the fishing industry all over the world."

Knotless is important, says factory manager Bob May, who joins us briefly on the loom.

"Anywhere you put a knot in fiber, it loses up to 60 percent of its strength," May says.

Some of the netting the company produces isn't for fishing, but for sporting facilities such as baseball parks and hockey rinks.

We move to another loom, known as "the big dog," which is using a larger diameter twine. NET Systems produces different grades of netting, including heavy stuff suitable for use in a codend, which is the bag at the back of a trawl that holds the catch.

Some newly made netting needs stretching in a chamber using steam heat. Purse seines typically are stretched by length, and trawls by depth.

Putting it all together: Our tour of the NET Systems campus takes us next into the assembly hall, a big space where nets can be extended and worked.

Each fishing net is built, or rebuilt, for a specific vessel. No nets are made on spec.

"Every boat has different requirements," says Fujimoto.

Truong Van Tran, easy to smile, is the supervisor in the net assembly hall. He is Vietnamese, as is much of his crew.

Today, the crew is working to repair a trawl net from the Alaska fishing vessel Ocean Hunter. The codend is loaded in the "codend jig," an apparatus that helps greatly with handling the heavy gear.

Our next stop is the steel shop, where trawl doors are produced. And upstairs is the engineering department.

"We're the only net company in the United States with our own engineering department," Fujimoto says.

NET Systems strives to live up to its name, making doors as well as nets and fashioning everything into a complete system for the customer, says Fujimoto and Koji Tamura, a company engineer.

Among the considerations in building a trawl system: sizing it to horsepower, and fitting it to the stern ramp.

NET Systems certainly has competitors, among them Seattle-based Dantrawl.

But the company has thrived at its secluded Bainbridge Island site since its beginning in 1978, and believes it has a busy future ahead.