Brunvoll reaps benefits of offshore wind sector

All contracts are for vessels in the offshore wind sector and include new customer Toyo Construction, for whom Vard is building a cable-laying vessel that will be propelled by the thrusters and use Brunvoll’s control system for propulsion and manoeuvring, its BruCon PTC (Propulsion & Thruster Control). This was launched last year, with new hardware and software to make the system more modular and modern and improve its cyver security,” said Sivert Olsvik Sæther, technical marketing engineer and naval architect with Brunvoll.

Toyo Construction is a Japanese general construction company that has a focus on offshore work, including container terminals and marine airports.

“This is important to us because it is for a new customer, it is a large delivery and Toyo is looking to expand its business in Japan,” said Sæther. By 2030, Japan aims to have 10GW installed.

The cable-laying vessel will be 150m long with a 28m beam and cable capacity of 9,000 tons.

It is scheduled to be commissioned in the first half of 2026.

Other orders

Maritime Journal in November reported on the two CSOVs ordered by Windward Offshore, a consortium set up to expand offshore wind services, and for these designer Vard again selected Brunvioll’s propulsion systems.

A further two vessels could also be ordered in the coming years.

Another two CSOVs were ordered by Purus Wind in May, with a similar theme – designed by Vard, who selected Brunvoll’s thrusters.

“Offshore wind is the theme here, as you can see,” said Sæther.

“CSOVs and SOVs work in close proximity to offshore structures and windmills. Brunvoll’s ducted azimuth propulsion thrusters have been improved to meet the increasingly stricter requirements for rapid, safe, and accurate DP operations for them.

“This includes significantly improved azimuth rotation speed, increased propeller acceleration/deceleration, and arrangements for increased thrust efficiency in terms of reduced thruster and hull interaction. These operations are rough on our equipment and there has been a lot of emphasis on limiting wear and tear and increasing the power efficiency.”

“We are humbled and proud of the cooperation we have had with Vard as their trusted partner for these newbuilds, and hopefully many more to come,” said Kåre Øyvind Vassdal, Group CEO at Brunvoll.

“The offshore wind market has become an important segment for Brunvoll, and these projects include state-of-the-art propulsion systems developed in the last few years.

“In addition to the efforts in product development, we also put significant efforts into our integrated value chain to ensure efficient production of the systems from our factory in Norway. With a combination of these additional orders to our orderbook, we can already see a good use of our factories in 2024 and into 2025, which has led us to invest a large amount in new production technology to increase our capacity.”