The Norwegian maritime business continues its efforts to keep up a brand new era of absolutely electrical autonomous ships, which is able to assist cut back emissions and enhance logistics operations. As a part of the newest improvement, a number one Norwegian furnishings producer has joined a latest preliminary examine to develop a novel offshore container ship between its manufacturing facility and delivery port. exchange conventional trucking.
Furnishings producer Ekornes labored with the German logistics firm DB Schenker along with the design firm Naval Dynamics to review the brand new autonomous ship. They’ll work with Kongsberg and Massterly, a three way partnership between Kongsberg and Wilhelmsen, to develop autonomous know-how and handle the operation of the brand new feedership.
“With an autonomous, absolutely electrical container feeder that takes our merchandise instantly from our port of Ikornnes, we are able to cut back our general carbon footprint,” mentioned Roger Lunde, CEO of Ekornes. “We even have higher management and extra flexibility in our logistics.”
The brand new autonomous, electrical, container ship is designed for shorter distances and was developed utilizing Naval Dynamics’ NDS AutoBarge 250 idea, developed in collaboration with Kongsberg and Massterly. The ship will journey between the port of Ekornes to Ikornnes in Sykkylven, to the port of Ålesund, which is the delivery heart. The freight route is 23 nautical miles.
The design idea envisages a 164-foot-long feed boat with a capability of as much as 300 tons of cargo. It’ll function at 7.7 knots and full the journey in roughly three hours. The objective is to maintain the ship unmanned whereas being managed by a distant Massterly operations heart. The middle helps different initiatives, together with Yara Birkeland. Ships are presently required to function with a crew, however firms are working to validate the know-how and assist regulatory change to permit for absolutely autonomous operations.
“We’re witnessing a basic shift from freight transport by highway with a major carbon footprint to scrub, energy-efficient freight transport by sea within the brief time period. Distances,” mentioned Geir Håøy, CEO of Kongsberg. His firm is now concerned in a variety of absolutely electrical and autonomous initiatives, together with Yara Birkeland and ASKO, and level out that this class performs an necessary function within the improvement of autonomous operations. Yara christened the brand new ship final week, marking its commissioning and subsequent section of testing, as in addition they intend to maneuver to completely autonomous operations. Yara Birkeland, which measures 262 ft in size and 3200 dwt, is powered by 20 batteries with a capability of 6.8 MWh. The ship is designed to function on a seven-mile route that transports manure from manufacturing facility to ship, and when absolutely operational, the plan requires each autonomous navigation and autonomous loading and unloading.
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The Norwegian meals distributor ASKA has additionally ordered two autonomous freight containers. The ships are in-built India and function on the Oslo Fjord junction, every with 16 vehicles at a time. AutoBarge, like Yara Birkeland, has centered on absolutely autonomous operations since 2024.
