Into the Northwest

With the extension of the US economic zone to 200 nautical miles, a new opportunity for the fishermen in the North-Wst and Alaske arose.

The abundance of Pollock in the extended zone in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea allowed a new fishery to develop. The large number of US fishing vessels in this area could combine its previous activity in the King Crab fishery with trawling for Pollock. All these boats now had to convert to trawling, but no suitable trawl winch designs were available in the US. By good fortune, Rapp's systems were ideal for the task. In the years 1980-88 some hundred units were sold and installed on these fishin vessels. A new Rapp company was founded in Seattle to market to and service the fishing fleet in this area.

Presently the range of winches covers not only winches for fishing purposes. Rapp operates a Total Engineering Management and Supervision system for all products also offering full maintenance and service support worldwide.

High priority is given to R&D activities and is closely linked to the group's core strategy of creating efficient quality products linked with innovative solutions, thus ensuring that Rapp remain leaders in the field of winch machinery & control technology.