Innovation award winners 2016

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The winners of the Spirit of Innovation Awards, Maritime Professional of the Year and Maritime Sustainability Award were announced at Seawork International’s awards and networking event.

Spirit of Innovation Awards
The Spirit of Innovations Showcase at Seawork 2016, sponsored by URICA, displayed the latest projects, products and vessels that are forging ahead in the industry to provide new solutions.

A Certificate of Commendation has been awarded to the winner of each category. In order to qualify, the product had to be new to the market in the past 12 months and provide a valuable insight into the latest in design, technology and applications.

2016 winners

The overall Innovations Showcase Winner (and Propulsion Category Winner) was Duodrive’s for its Duodrivetrain, a unique end-to-end performance engineering product destined for conventional shaft-driven boats below 24m in length. Without special hull design, this class of vessel has not previously been able to access the energy saving properties of Contra-rotation propulsion. The Duodrivetrain was deemed by the judging panel to be innovative in its delivery of superb results in terms of fuel consumption, power and thrust.

Spirit of Innovations’ Runner Up and Marine Engineering Category Winner, Punk Couplings Ltd’s product, Punk Couplings, are flexible torque couplings that operate geometrically in the same way as a universal joint but their unique patented design creates an extremely compact and robust coupling. Punk couplings use a novel geometric approach to combine the benefits of a gear coupling with the flexibility of a universal joint and have a number of unique features, providing a new revolutionary technology platform.

The winner of the Electronics Category was C A Clase UK Ltd’s Lars Thrane LT1000 Navigation Reference Unit is a small, compact, and very advanced unit with 12 precision sensors, providing the accuracy and functionality of a satellite compass along with air pressure and temperature at a greatly reduced cost and a lot smaller in size.

The runner up for this category was French company C-Sense for the Tele-Pilot, being a new solution to easily send measured data from a vessel to the office. It is innovative as it enables operators to access to their fleet’s consumption at a glance.

The Marine Engineering Category Runner Up was Sea Sure Ltd for the retro-fit shock mitigation seat unit with integrated monitoring & data logging. Uniquely, this seat base suspension unit incorporates the latest shock absorber technology, clever geometry, construction, bearing systems and "g-force" monitoring into a single retro-fit unit.

The winner of the Safety Category was Spinlock Ltd, which, taking advantage of modern LED technology has come up with the Lume-On, tiny water activated LED lights which attach to a lifejacket’s bladder, turning the whole lifejacket into a glowing light. It received the award as Spinlock has a found such a cost-effective and simple way of using modern LED technology to further improve Man Over Board identification and recovery.

The propulsion Category Runner Up was Hamilton Jet for its JETanchor positioning system which allows marine operators the ability to use the new automatic modes to improve accuracy whilst maneuvering a vessel. The ‘Station Keeping’ mode gives the operator the ability to automatically hold vessel position and aimed predominantly at commercial boats, the JETanchor system provides a cost effective "dynamic-positioning-type" system for smaller vessels with waterjets from HJ292 to HJ403 with blueARROW controls.

Maritime Professional of the Year
The Maritime Professional of the Year award 2016 celebrates exemplary individuals within the maritime sector. Congratulations go to all our shortlisted nominees for their hard work within the industry: Peter Weide of MarShip UK, Peter Eyre of Peter Eyre Marine Design and Nichole Kalil of ACR Electronics.

The Maritime Professional of the Year 2016 winner was John Haynes, managing director of Shock Mitigation Solutions.

He was nominated by James Ellison, who said: “John Haynes is a thought leader in the high speed craft, shock mitigation and hybrid marine power sectors with a unique ability to engage and create momentum globally.”

“He has a passion for these sectors, rooted in his own maritime background. He has a genuine vision of improving people’s lives on boats. His work with over 100 organisations is testament to this.”

Mr Ellison added: “John provides professional end-user organisations, boat builders and equipment manufacturers with relevant subject matter expertise plus an independent overview of how the sub IMO fast boat sector is rapidly changing worldwide. His subject matter expertise includes 30 years training, consultancy and strategic product development.”

Maritime Sustainability Award 2016
This year saw the introduction of the Maritime Sustainability Award, which is awarded to the company or organisation operating within the commercial marine and workboat sector who demonstrate outstanding focus in its environmental and sustainability efforts.

The winner of this award was CWind for its achievement of considerable fuel savings.