ANALYSIS • NORDIC INNOVATION
Disruptive course ahead
Rolls-Royce Marine is just one of many Nordic-based pioneers preparing for radical change in the maritime industries, as Seatrade writers report.
Nordic-based companies have long been in the forefront of maritime innovation and none more so than Rolls-Royce Marine, despite – or perhaps because of – the hard time it is having in today’s troubled offshore market.
In recent weeks, it has revealed a flurry of new initiatives that underline its pioneering role, including a Finnish R&D facility working on ‘ship intelligence’ in Turku; a new modular container ship design which could make shipowners’ investment decisions a whole lot simpler; and offshore supply vessel drones which could hit the water well before 2020.
Mikael Mäkinen, president of the company’s marine business, stresses that R&D spending is vital in a cyclical market and concedes that R-R may not have been quick enough at cutting costs immediately after the oil price crash. But the current downturn is unprecedented during his career, he says, and R-R is certainly now trying to make up ground.
As well as extra cash for the R&D facility in Turku, R-R has signed an MoU with the Technology Centre for Offshore and Marine, Singapore, to work on smart ship technologies,
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seatrade-maritime.com Seatrade Maritime Review • Quarterly Issue 2 • June 2017 29
agreed another MoU with MacGregor to research ship autonomy and container ship cargo-handling systems, tied up a strategic partnership with Tampere University in Finland to test the technology required to support systems for autonomous navigation, and inked a deal with Swedish ferry company Stena Line to collaborate in the development of its first intelligent awareness system for assimilating remote sensor data.
R-R’s new strategy envisions a very different future for shipping. ‘The marine business is in for a huge change,’ Mäkinen predicts. Not only will shipyards and shipowners have to ‘restructure’, he says, but also digitalization will have an impact on everyone in the business, including equipment and system providers.
Ironically the oil price drop has been of benefit in highlighting inefficiencies that can be improved upon, he
Electric Blue container feeder concept
believes. Big container ships operating with load factors of 70% between Asia and Europe have seen an immediate efficiency gain of 30%, for example, whilst Statoil can make more money today at $50 a barrel than it did before when prices were more than $100 and ‘nobody gave a damn’.
R-R is actively promoting its ‘power- by-the-hour’ concept, adapted from its well-established aviation model, aimed at maximising uptime and revenue for customers. And Oskar Levander, the
Rolls-Royce’s new strategy envisions a very different future for shipping
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