Page 54: of Marine Technology Magazine (May 2022)

Tech Files

Heavy Lifting, Cranes & Davits

Navy, Offshore Markets give Vestdavit a Lift

Vestdavit made a big splash at the live return Nor-Shipping peratures as low as -25C.

in Oslo in April by showcasing a full-size PLR-5000 davit on In addition, Vestdavit is delivering a TDB-10000L boat-han- its stand. Normally mounted on the decks of naval or coast- dling system as well as a wagon-based boat transfer system, guard vessels for launch of smaller craft, the davit sports a based on its MissionEase concept, for each of the newbuilds. 5000kg lifting capacity. The year 2021 was a strong sales year Vestdavit also won its ? rst order with the Finnish shipyard for the company, including a pair of signature orders. Vestda- Rauma Marine Constructions (RMC) to supply davits for a vit booked an order with the Norwegian Coast Guard (NCG) series of the Finnish Navy’s four newbuild multi-role com- for a total of six PLR-5003KV systems being supplied for a bat vessels, thereby bolstering its position in the wider Nordic series of three Jan Mayen-class polar patrol vessels now under naval market. The 114 x 16m Pohjanmaa-class corvettes will construction at Norway’s Vard Langsten yard, of which the sport ice-strengthened hulls and are to be built at RMC’s ship- ? rst is due for delivery this year. yard in Rauma, Finland as part of the navy’s $1.36B Squad-

Each of the newbuild will have two specially designed PLR ron 2020 project. We caught up with Rolf Andreas Wingard, systems intended to meet the NCG’s requirement for 330 days Managing Director, Vestdavit, in Oslo for his insights on the a year of operational availability in up to Sea State 5 and tem- technology and the market drivers moving forward.

Rolf, we’re coming off of two years of pandemic.

Can you give insight on how it impacted Vestdavit and, speci? cally, what did you ? nd to be the big- gest challenges?

The biggest change was, in the middle of all this, we purchased our biggest manufacturing supplier, a facility in Poland, a company with 70 employees. That was a good thing because we secured the supply chain and we ensured that we had capacity to produce what we had sold. We learned that our new colleagues in

Poland were very capable of running the busi- ness and ensuring proper quality of everything they built.

Do you see any positives that came out of COVID, from a business standpoint?

I think the positive thing is that we saw that we don’t have to travel as much as we have previously done. We saw this with our col- leagues in Poland. Normally we had been trav- elling to attend and perform testing.

Is there anything new with Vestdavit?

We see everything is getting bigger and more advanced. I think we’ve been loyal to our strat-

Rolf Andreas Wingard, Managing Director,

Vestdavit in front of the PLR-5000 davit @

NorShipping.

Photo: Greg Trauthwein 54 May/June 2022

MTR #4 (50-63).indd 54 4/28/2022 9:15:38 AM