Georg Haney has been appointed as the new environmental director at Hampiðjan, and he comes to the company after ten years of working wth fishing gear research at Iceland’s Marine and Freshwater Research Institute.

Georg is from Jena in Germany, and came to Iceland in 2006 as an Erasmus Programme exchange student. As well as his own language, Georg speaks English and Icelandic like a native.

‘I studied mining engineering at the mining department of the University of Freiburg in Saxony. After coming to Iceland, I decided to focus on environmental and resource technology at the University of Iceland for my master’s degree,’ he said, adding that he graduated in 2010 and his first job was as a project manager with the Natural Science Institute of the Westfjords.

‘I came to the conclusion that I like living in Iceland. In 2012, I was appointed as a specialist in matters concerning fishing gears at the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute’s branch in Ísafjörður, but the post was then moved to Hafnarfjörður and I decided to move to with it. Projects were connected to the environmental effects of fishing gears, their selectivity and working lifetime, and to marine waste. I was also in charge of fishing gears used by the Institute for stock assessment.’

‘On behalf of Hampiðjan I will be managing environmental concerns and joins projects between the parent company and the group’s subsidiary companies. This is something that is becoming an increasingly prominent factor in Hampiðjan’s activities, not least as there is a strong will within the company and among fishing companies to do better.’

The main activities on the agenda are to phase in Hampiðjan’s environmental policy and certification on a worldwide basis, and the two largest elements of the group, Hampiðjan Baltic and Hampiðjan Ísland, have already been certified to the international ISO14001 environmental standard. Part of the role is also to monitor the company’s carbon emissions and to calculate status of the group as a whole.

‘Alongside this, there is work to be done related to the working lifetimes of fishing gears, environmentally friendly fisheries, product development and fishing gear materials, and procedures for the reception of used fishing gears, grading and recycling,’ Georg said.

‘The aim is for all of the subsidiary companies to work to the same quality standard. The fishing gears themselves are not environmentally certified, but the companies producing them are. I have a strong interest in the way product development will evolve in the near future, and Hampiðjan has the resources at hand to be a leader in this development,’ said Georg Haney, Hampiðjan’s environmental director.