About Us
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What we do
Electrafish Ltd. design and manufacture high-quality electric fishing
equipment used for freshwater fish management and to assist in the
preservation of freshwater fish.
We supply new generator and battery powered fishing machines from 300
watts to 10 Kilowatts, anodes, cathodes, electric fishing generators
and boom boat controllers.
On site periodic safety checks are carried out to customer
requirements and Environment Agency standards.
We do fast maintenance & servicing of all our products.
Our history
Originally the main business activity of Dr Alec Wortley's company W
Controls was the design and manufacture of speed controllers for
machine tools and conveyor belts, running machines as well as magnet
controllers, inverters, precipitator controllers, and transfer
printing machines. Customers included Rolls Royce of Derby, High Duty
Alloys of Redditch, Babcock and Wilcox of Tipton, Jones and Shipman
machine tools of Leicester, Bates Textile Machines of Leicester, Sport
Engineering and Boxmag Rapid of Birmingham, and many coal fired power
stations. This branch of the business was sold in 1980 and at that
time it was decided to concentrate on designing and manufacturing high
quality, reliable electrofishing machines. Dr Alec Wortley was the
original founder of a very successful electrofishing equipment
manufacturing company in Stourbridge which later moved to
Wolverhampton, and is now trading as Electrafish.
When this electrofishing company began in 1975 under the name W
Controls there was only one other reputable company manufacturing
these products within the UK, Millstream based in Malvern. Products
made by the successor company to W Controls are still widely employed
by The Environment Agency in the UK and these machines were all
designed and carefully manufactured with reliability and effectiveness
in mind. The original electrofishing machines were AC/DC output
machines for use in the relatively high conductivity waters of East
Anglia.
Later, a wide range of electrofishing machines were developed with
outputs of Pulsed DC, Smooth DC, variable AC, high frequency, Pulsed
DC and various combinations of all these outputs as well as cycling
outputs, where the output waveform cycles at preset adjustable
intervals between Pulsed DC and Smooth DC.
Before long universities discovered the benefits of using
electrofishing equipment as a tool for carrying out fisheries surveys
and investigations into salmonids, coarse fish and invertebrates.
Eventually generator powered and battery powered electrofishing
machines were developed having higher output voltages for use in very
low conductivity waters.
Standard electrofishing machines have outputs of 0 to 200/250 volts DC
but new designs have now been developed and are in production having
variable output voltages from 0 to 400, 500, 600, 800, 1000 or 1500
volts DC with power levels for generator powered machines up to 20
Kilowatts and battery powered electrofishing machines of 180 and 400
watts rating.
