When thyssenkrupp and Wilhelmsen stood together at the 2023 NAMIC Global Additive Manufacturing Summit to announce their collaboration, it marked a possible turn of the tide for the way the maritime and energy sectors procure parts.
The joint venture, Pelagus 3D, holds an ambitious plan to serve more than 4,000 vessels and oil and gas platforms worldwide. To do that, the German steel company and Norwegian maritime firm are leveraging additive manufacturing technologies and a global network of OEMs to build a digital platform that delivers spare parts on-demand.
Pelagus, essentially, intends to become the Amazon of the sea.
The maritime and offshore sectors face much of the same logistical problems encountered by other industrial sectors hampered by the long, unbending lead times of traditional manufacturing supply chains but exacerbated by vast geographical challenges that mean spare parts can sometimes take up to two years to reach their intended vessels. This Singapore-based collaboration, forged after years spent testing the waters of AM’s feasibility and applicability, aims to drastically reform that model and deliver parts to vessels in a matter of weeks or even days.
“The simple equation here is that if the spare part is not available it leads to downtime for the system and that means for either a maritime vessel or offshore platform, money is wasted,” Kenlip Ong, Chief Executive Officer at Pelagus 3D, told TCT.
Industries continues to stock warehouses ‘just in case’ without any guarantee that the parts stocked will ever be put to use. As shared by Professor Jennifer Johns at the University of Bristol Business School, in the UK alone, the number of business premises classified as transport and storage increased by 88% in 2021 compared to 2011, and according to Ong, for the offshore sector, studies have shown that around 80% of parts stocked in warehouses are never utilised.
“The sad truth is that you cannot stock everything,” Ong continued. “You are committing to upfront investment costs where you’re taking money that you may not have and taking loans out as a business to put in the stocking of a warehouse. You might not even use it but you need it because you never know when your pump system for your offshore platform is going to go down. It’s capital locked away, so this represents a very big opportunity for businesses to benefit from 3D printing.”
Pelagus 3D believes that opportunity could bring parts to users faster, reduce the need for large physical inventories, and deliver better, more optimised products. In a project with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, for example, a return oil standpipe was successfully redesigned, complete with internal channels and Kawasaki logo, to reduce weight by 90% and delivered to a vessel in Japan in just 15 days. Conventionally, that same part would have taken 135 days to deliver at an annual storage cost of 340 USD.
“There’s a sustainability angle here too,” Ong explained. “Improvement of the design is such that the valve angles and the flow of the channels are improved so we don’t have leakages. This is a good example of how we are able to add value to our customers.”
Wilhelmsen began 3D printing initiatives in 2019, working on simple polymer parts such as gears. Through a collaboration with thyssenkrupp in 2020, its business model shifted but learnings from past projects and collaborations galvanised Pelagus 3D in its belief that additive presents huge potential for the industry.
“We approach it from a big picture perspective,” Ong said. “It’s very different from five years ago when people were just trying to get one or two parts built as prestige projects. Now we’re looking at this from ‘I really need to commercialise this,’ and the only way to do this is to have a big picture perspective and convince senior management that this is a viable technology that we should invest in.”
Pelagus says it is providing customers with access to the entirety of the AM technology spectrum. It is working with over 80 suppliers across the globe and makes process recommendations based on part analysis that determine the best method of manufacture, which will then be facilitated through a manufacturing partner as close to the point of need as possible. This is all done alongside OEMs and maritime certification bodies, like the DNV and ABS, to deliver parts with a full warranty and certification, and crucially, build trust with the end user.
“We are working together with the original equipment manufacturers to provide value to them and uncover opportunities for them to select additive manufacturing as the technology of choice for specific spare parts that their customers require,” Ong said. “We basically have a way to seamlessly integrate it into the procurement processes of our customers and I think that has very big implications in terms of uptake and use because if you’re just doing prestige projects, as long as you can deliver those three parts, [for example], it’s fine. But for us, this is meant to be a way for them to order parts in real time, continually.”
The company is investing in building out its Pelagus software platform and engaging with ship owners, OEMs and maritime engineers to assess their data, identify high potential parts and ensure the platform is speaking the same language within this new digital infrastructure. According to the team, when it comes to the maritime industry, no feedback is good feedback but the list of companies that are already engaging with Pelagus – Hafnia, Kongsberg Maritime, Doosan, Jets, Kawasaki Heavy Industries – and the 4,000 assets that have already been onboarded, are a good indicator of the waves it’s already making. Earlier this year, Pelagus also hit a milestone by securing ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001: 2018 certifications across its global operations, validating its ability to consistently provide spare parts and services at the quality and regulatory standards required by the maritime and offshore industries. That guarantee is further fortified by the fact that Pelagus is not trying to replace OEMs but is instead working in tandem as a partner to augment their capacity and add value by reengineering traditional parts using data from their end users and getting products back to them much faster. It is still a full OEM part, just a 3D printed one.
“For OEMs, the subcontracting or licensing of fabrication to an external supplier is not new to them,” Ong added. “Having a supplier that’s used additive manufacturing, as long as we’re able to explain the risks and accommodate for those contingencies, I think that’s something that they’re very comfortable to do.”
The team has grand and global ambitions. In the next few years, Pelagus wants to be the first place that comes to mind when a chief engineer on board one of the 40,000 vessels sailing around the world right now is in need of a spare part. The vision is to have each of the major OEMs serving the maritime and offshore industry on board the platform, and encourage the adoption of AM technologies to solve some of their biggest challenges.
“The whole idea in the future is to make sure AM is really well known in the maritime industry, that’s the focus for us right now,” Ong concluded.
This article originally appeared inside TCT Europe Edition Vol. 32 Issue 4 and TCT North American Edition Vol. 10 Issue 4. Subscribe here to receive your FREE print copy of TCT Magazine, delivered to your door six times a year.
