Page 32: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Mar/Apr 2022)

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INTERVIEW PER LUND, CEO, ODFJELL OCEANWIND

I : NTERVIEW

PER LUND,

CEO, O

DFJELL

O

CEANWIND

A look inside Odfjell Oceanwind, a Norwegian start-up that plans to decarbonize the offshore drilling industry by using giant ? oating wind turbines, mobile offshore wind units. Per Lund, CEO explains.

All images: Odfjell Oceanwind a global leading player in ? oating offshore wind, and where

Per, to start, please give a ‘by the num- that will bring us in size is not easy to say. But personally, bers’ look at Odfjell Oceanwind.

Oceanwind was started in 2019 by a group of founders with our ? rst natural target is to become the largest company in many years of experience in ? oating wind. The following year, the Odfjell Drilling Group.

Odfjell Drilling was invited to co-invest in the company and

How does your previous experience trans- to develop global ? oating wind specialists. [The investment late into your current role as CEO?

was made and the company name was changed to] Odfjell

Being a naval architect by education and career, I’ve

Oceanwind. Today we have our own proprietary product, the mobile offshore wind unit (MOWU), and we are developing never been afraid to try new things. And I’ve always been intrigued by new market opportunities. I love a challenge, the ? rst projects aiming for deployment in 2024.

and I tend to grasp new technologies fast. In particular, my strengths lies in the crossroad between technology and

I know you’re still in the startup phase, business development. Seeing a market, seeing a technol- but how big is the company today? And ogy and trying to pair the two to develop business.

looking ahead, what’s your projection for the coming five to 10 years?

In a recent interview describing Odfjell Drill-

Today, we are about 40 people working in Odfjell ing’s capabilities and capital discipline, the

Oceanwind to support the design of our mobile offshore

CEO was quoted as saying “We’ve never built wind units, which are based on a deep sea semi-? oating anything on speculation. Everything that we wind foundation, while also setting up for the production did was against contracts and income.” Is line and preparing for operations.

this the philosophy of Odfjell Oceanwind also?

To predict how this will look in ? ve to 10 years is not

The Odfjell family is an old ship owner family, very easy in the market for ? oating wind. When you talk about permanent ? oating wind farms, it’s in an extremely rapid conscious about risk taking, certainly in the offshore drill- ing market. The renewable business with ? oating offshore growth phase with new large projects and license plans be- ing announced almost weekly. Our ambition is to become wind, where we sell a commodity in power, electricity, will 32 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM