Page 17: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2018)

Association of Classi? cation Societies leading technologies as a basis for new considerably with revenue more than dou- As a result of our efforts and achieve- (IACS) in 1988, KR works hard to ensure international maritime standards. bling. And this is not just the Republic ments over the last ? ve years, KR has so- that customers receive an immediate, Traditionally, most of KR’s revenue of Korean Navy, KR now offers various lidi? ed its international client base and high quality service wherever they are. has been generated from class surveys for class services to the Peruvian Navy, the In- the non-Korean KR-classed ? eet size

Today, KR is authorized by 78 gov- commercial vessels. However, since 2013, donesian Navy and the Royal Thai Navy, has increased substantially both with ex- ernments to act as a Recognized Organi- KR’s naval vessels business has grown and has done so for the last ? ve years. isting vessels and newbuilding. zation and has expanded its international network to offer customers services, the most recent being in Portugal which opened this year. Re? ecting this global growth, as of July 2018, KR’s classed ? eet stands at 68m GT and about one third of the society’s gross tonnage is now owned by international shipowners.

Noting the rising importance of LNG as a marine fuel, KR has invested signi? - cant resources into the development of class technical services for global LNG partners. For example, KR has success- fully completed the development of a standard design for each type of cargo containment system, targeting mem- brane tank LNG carriers of 170K work- ing with the so-called ‘BIG 3’ shipyards (HHI, SHI and DSME). We provided full technical engineering services to build the world’s ? rst small-scale ? oat- ing regasi? cation unit in 2016. In addi- tion, KR provided technical class servic- es to the world’s ? rst LNG fueled bulk carrier built with high-manganese steel

LNG fuel tanks in 2015.

To help our clients meet environmen- tal regulations, in 2015, KR opened the world’s ? rst Greenship Equipment test certi? cation center in Gunsan, Korea to provide evaluation, analysis and test of greenship equipment including marine diesel engines. In 2016, we signi? cantly expanded our land-based test facilities for Ballast Water Management System (BWMS) to offer the largest capacity for BWMS testing to our international clients. In fact, KR was accepted as the very ? rst Independent Laboratory in Asia to be accredited by the United

States Coast Guard.

In 2017, KR opened a new ICT (in- formation communications technology)

Center to dramatically enhance the ap- plication of advanced information and

ICT across the maritime and ship classi- ? cation industries. Currently, signi? cant

R&D and speci? c projects in the ? elds of cyber security, autonomous vessels, big data, virtual reality and drones are being conducted. In addition, linked to the International Maritime Organization (IMO)’s e-Navigation strategy, the Ko- rean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries launched a SMART-Navigation project in 2016, which is scheduled to run from 2016-2020 with a budget of $114 mil- lion. As a key member of this SMART-

Navigation project team, KR is con- ducting research and development into www.marinelink.com 17

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