Page 18: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (February 2025)

MEET THE CTO

TALKING MARINE COATINGS WITH

CHRISTER ØPSTAD, JOTUN

Sourcing and maintaining marine coatings systems are arguably a shipown- er’s most critical means to ensure a long and productive lifecycle for ships, boats and offshore rigs. At the same time, coatings have become a central part of the ship ef? ciency, decarbonization discussion. Christer Øpstad, Glob- al R&D Director Fouling Protection, Jotun, discusses how these macro trends are driving R&D within his laboratories today.

By Greg Trauthwein

To start us off, can you provide a ‘by the num- What digital tools do you offer to ship owners bers’ look at Jotun today? to gauge the effectiveness of their coatings?

Jotun is headquartered in Sandefjord, Norway, still a family- Over the last 10-15 years there’s been a signi? cant focus owned company founded almost 100 years ago. We are a global on performance: performance management, performance company with operations in more than 100 countries across the measurement, assessment and understanding so that they can world, with more than 11,000 employees worldwide and 40+ fac- monitor and optimize along the way. And then comes the tories. R&D is a central part of our operations, and we have seven digital shift, which has brought upon us new opportunities. regional laboratories set across our key markets, including our We have established the HullKeeper system where we lever- main central R&D laboratory here in Norway. Jotun is present in age algorithms that can help predict the risk of a vessel. We four market segments, but if we drill down to shipping and the can have retrospective monitoring of performance to help the marine area, Jotun delivers a full range of products and solution, customers understand and monitor and gauge how well their not only the hull performance coatings as the antifouling, but vessels are performing and also help them evaluate whether also a full set of corrosion protection, cargo hold solutions and they’re operating at peak performance.

onboard maintenance during the operational stage of the vessel.

How are the digital + decarbonization trends,

What is the ‘bread and butter’ of the Jotun hull driving your day-to-day focus?

coating lineup? They are mega topics and they are the core of our focus. It’s

It’s broad, and that’s the nature of the industry. The shipping not about the paint in the can, it’s the effect of the paint. For us, industry is diverse and dynamic, and there is not really any single a clean hull really sits at the core of our focus and in the ship- product or technology that ful? lls all needs. Our approach is tech- ping industry, decarbonization, fuel ef? ciency, and also protect- nology neutral, where we leverage a range of technologies and ing biodiversity are all closely connected with this clean hull.

products in our portfolio to be able to provide that performance So our work in many ways is centered on developing tech- for our customers’ needs; but having available a wide range of nologies, products, and solutions that provide ships with the documented solutions where we can help the customer select the cleanest possible hulls to support the industry’s ambitions solutions that are optimized to their speci? c trades and vessels. to decarbonize and save fuels. One of the things that we’re

But if we have to distill it down to, let’s call it the bread and proud of is our ? ow cell, a tool that we have in the lab. butter, I would say that what we focus the most on is our hull This allows us to recreate the ? ow conditions on the hull performance solution, where we leverage different parts of tech- of ships to measure and understand how different surfaces nologies, different products, helping the customers to do the ap- interact with water and generate drag, helping to quantify plication right, using also digital tools such as our HullKeeper how different types of coatings, different types of surfaces platform to maximize the bene? ts of the coating. More and more in? uence the friction and the total resistance of that ship. we’re wrapping things around the effect that our coatings have We can use that together with CFD, for example, to be able rather than focusing it down on a speci? c technology because the to accurately predict the expected performance of various end goal is the customer experience, not the coating in the can. products and optimize them.

18 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • February 2025

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