Europort opens with circular themes and parallels with ‘Roaring Twenties’

Today’s geopolitics, digitalisation and sustainability issues are throwing up their own turbulence, said the key note address, delivered by Bob Nolet, the 11^th generation of the Nolet Family Distillery.

A subsequent panel of maritime leaders examined key topics such as the recent IMO MEPC vote to postpone carbon taxes, Europe’s shipbuilding future, technology, smart manufacturing, and, of course, sustainability.

Sustainability is experiencing something of its own transition this year, with a lot of emphasis on ‘circularity’ – indeed, a ‘Circular Route’ to showcase 14 companies doing what they can to re-use, expand or simply make things last longer has been organised this year for the first time.

Early on at the Green Stage, Van Oord and Holland Shipyards organised an ‘Expand the Life, Enhance the Legacy’ session.

John Bertens, Manager Procurement, Capex and Opex, with Van Oord, presented ‘Total Life and Circularity’, explaining how today’s objective should be to ‘extract maximum value’ and ‘maximise circulation’. He cited Svanen, which was built in 1991 as a crane vessel to build bridges.

She has been modified a number of times to work with pontoons and wind turbines, gradually increasing in capacity along with the size of the monopiles she has installed.

Her total is now 750 monopiles installed in the North Sea and Baltics, he said, and 225 transition pieces.

“Re-use, repair, refurbish and re-manufacture,” he said. “Everything from ships to toilet rolls.”

Thijs van der Schaaf, Technical Manager at Holland Shipyards Group, explained how, in his ‘The Naked Truth’ presentation, simply using less of a material can lead to dramatic cost savings with little negative outcome.

Whether it’s the 1920s or the 2020s transition is the theme and the rest of the show is going to explore the latest in digitalisation, electrification and cyber security: all linked and all presenting challenges for the industry’s future.

Europort is now in its 42nd year.