The company Irko it is a contractor of high-class fishing boats with a world renown and producer of steel structures for the needs of shipbuilding and offshore. She built her brand thanks to a specialized squad that provides excellent quality and timely performance.
IRKO for over 20 years specializes in the construction of sections and ship blocks, ship hulls and fully equipped floating units. Performs foundations for ship devices and for offshore needs and various types of equipment: pacholas, transport rollers, hatches, steel covers. The company is also a frequent subcontractor of most Tri-City shipyards as a producer of semi-finished products.
Small fishing boats
An important part of the company’s operations occupies the production of small fishing boats. Irko, despite high competition among Polish shipyards specialized in small prototype units for individual orders, has become a known and appreciated brand for years. It implements projects mainly for customers from Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Iceland.
Each order is treated individually, the construction often moves despite the lack of approval of all details. The ordered cutters are mainly trawl units, or those that fish, ralling a network behind us.
“Last year, we made a very interesting cutter for the client from Denmark, so called Long-Liner – says Jacek Mach, Trade Director Irko. – This is a small unit for a 5-person crew, specialized in the mid-hall. Fishermen at their disposal about 30 km of a rope with smaller links on which there are hooks with a bait. After about the era of trawling, the rope is rolled with half. The unit will swim off the coast of Greenland.”
The mentioned Long-liner has a specially reinforced hull to deal with difficult marine conditions on these geographic widths. To increase the comfort of work, an additional acoustic insulation of the social part was used. In addition to insulation using mineral wool under the walls of the rooms, special tiles stered by the insulating substance are. This type of structure reduces vibrations produced by a working engine. “This project was performed properly on the customer’s request and shipowner. You can say that we will make every project that the client asks” – adds Jacek Mach. Any modifications to improve the commercial values of Kutra were carried out on a regular basis. The entire production process – with a motor installation, thermal insulation of the hold and the construction of a social part – took half a year.
Fishing not for a Pole
All fishing boats, which produces IRKO, go to the markets of Western Europe. Reducing the amount of fish in the Baltic Sea and therefore imposed fishing limits have made the company for many years there are no orders on fishing boats from Polish companies. “This is of course a matter of political part, because currently the European Union is trying to reduce our parental fishing fleet, compensating for subsidies, and fisherman’s profession in Poland goes slowly into oblivion” explains Jacek Mach. The Trade Director Irko adds that a chance for our fisheries is possibly a change in the type of entity to catch for feed, because fish fished in this way are still present in the Baltic Sea. In this case, there would be a chance to obtain Polish customers.
Production innovation
Regarding the Gdańsk company, innovation is based mainly on improving the production cycle and the use of the latest production support devices. “Innovative usually are the products themselves performed by us – says Jacek Mach. – mostly prototype devices adapted to the customer’s needs.” Due to the specificity of production, each of these projects contains new elements that improve subsequent use, e.g. a previously mentioned sound insulation system in a fishing kutter.
Interesting realizations
In addition to typical orders such as the prefabrication of sections and ship blocks, the company implements large-size orders. For the renovation company Shipbuilding, a large shipyard of Gdańsk, Irko made the entire passenger-car fuse. A 1600-ton hull was created on a specially leased area. The execution of this order outside the client shipyard was important due to the layer of several projects and lack of space for their execution. Work on the hull lasted half a year. “This project was particularly important for the client, because thanks to the fact that we made a hull for him, he launched two ferries at the same time. Such contracts are ideal because they allow both parties to achieve measurable, good effects “- emphasizes Jacek Mach.
The company also performs projects with smaller dimensions and not so well prepared in terms of design. The above-mentioned Long-Liner cutter was made on the basis of manually prepared documentation. The customer did not provide any documentation in digital form, only hand-drawn sketches. The implementation of such tasks is huge challenges that successfully manage to meet.
Expansion of the company
Currently, IRKO deals mainly with prefabrication of steel structures in the ordering party. This happens due to the dimensions of these structures. Great interest in the company’s services and the prospect of performing subsequent constructions meant that IRKO company works on increasing the production site, where it will be able to pursue customer orders. Key here is access to the waterfront to easily transport the implementations.
Values Irko
In the shipbuilding industry and offshore industry, the most important for the client are a short start and implementation time and flexibility. All this must take place with high quality and moderate prices. With present competition on the market, this is the only way to obtain contracts. To overtake competition, IRKO invests in a staff that allows you to fulfill your orders quickly and reliably. “We now have a very good staff and we base your success – says Jacek Mach. – Unfortunately, there may be a problem with properly educated employees in the future, because few young people go to shipbuilding competitions. This is associated with a problem of lack of vocational schools. As a result, in the reduction of the number of employees for retirement, qualified employees may run out quickly. ”
Irko does not forget about the needy, engaging in all kinds of charity. It supports materially different foundations, organizes the “noble package”, completed a charity of several steel structures needed by sports organizations. Among the employees organize shares of recruitment of potential marrow donors for the DKMS Foundation.
Bartłomiej Wiktorski
The main IRKO weldingman on the company’s machine back and with unconventional solutions of technical problems.
Irko has a large machine base, thanks to which we carry out even the most complex projects. We are one of the few Pomeranian shipyards, which has complete equipment and a production string. Despite the relatively small size, it allows us to build whole units from the beginning to the end. In addition to equipment such as dozens of rectifiers, semi-trailers and welding machines (methods 111, 136 and 121), dozens of pneumatic grinders or hydraulic pumps, we have a CNC gas cutter with a working table 5 × 15 to two burners, a hydraulic edge press with a pressure of 400 t a working width 5 m, as well as a working width with a working width of 10 m. This is the last device, thanks to its powerful parameters, allows you to achieve rolling to a thickness of 30 mm at a 10-meter sheet. Therefore, our rolling services even used shipyards from Szczecin. This type of roller is a few waters in Poland.
Thanks to such a rich equipment, we carry out contracts without using subcontractors. We create infrastructure that allows you to perform entire turnkey contracts, i.e. ships and cutters, elements of a larger whole, i.e. sections and foundations, as well as individual services – bending, cutting and rolling. This would not be possible without specialized management and production crew. They are the biggest strength of the company. In addition to knowledge and experience, extraordinary creativity also shows.
An example of such action is a two-storey hydraulic car park built in cooperation with Bibus Menos, a Gdańsk company from the industrial industry. Parking allows automatic parking of passenger cars on a kind of steel shelves. Thanks to this solution, six cars can stand through three vehicles. In the future, this solution will allow you to reduce the surface used by parking cars, because the device can be expanded for modules.
Another example of unconventional action is the launch of ships built entirely in our shipyard that does not have access to the waterfront. We transported a 50-ton ship from our production plant to the nearest truck. It was only there that the floating crane took over this ship to launch it in the right port swimming pool. Crew of fitters, welders, grinders and blacksmith approaches each task individually and creates instruments for special tasks on a regular basis. Often, it allowed us to leave a defensive hand from difficult to perform tasks.
