Damen gives presentation to government minister at Rotterdam maritime sector meeting
On 28 January 2019, Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management, visited Rotterdam to meet Damen Shipyards Group and other Dutch maritime industry leaders. At this major event, Minister Van Nieuwenhuizen heard presentations from Damen, Van Oord and other key representatives of the country’s thriving maritime industry, the company said in its release.
The presentations took place on a DAMEN vessel, FCS 2610, which transported the minister, officials and maritime industry representatives from the head office of Hatenboer-Water in Schiedam, along the Nieuwe Maas, to the head office of Van Oord in Rotterdam.
René Berkvens, CEO of the DAMEN Group, says: “We were happy to welcome Minister Van Nieuwenhuizen to Rotterdam today, and we appreciate her continued interest in, and strong support of, our maritime sector. Face-to-face meetings like this help to inform the government policies, programmes, regulations and infrastructure changes needed to foster new technologies and business growth.”
Three industry leaders gave the minister presentations on innovations and developments in: maritime technology (speaker Bas Buchner, President, Maritime Research Institute Netherlands); water technology (speaker Willem Buijs, CEO of Hatenboer-Water); and delta technology (speaker Hendrik Postma, Chairman of the Association of Marine Contractors). Other participants contributed to the themes of ‘clean’, ‘smart’ and ‘safe’. These were respectively: speaker Peter Paul van Voorst, Founder of Skoon Energy; speaker Toine Cleophas, Manager Research at Damen Shipyards Group; and four students from Delft University of Technology, who demonstrated new emergency flotation and stability devices.
Particular topics included ‘better ships, cleaner oceans’, private-public partnerships, autonomous shipping, electric shipping, digitalisation, and ship management mobile apps. The maritime sector is part of the top sector ‘Water and Maritime’ – one of the Government’s nine priority, high growth, export-oriented sectors of the economy. The Netherlands has long been a world leader in maritime engineering and water management, which encompass activities such as shipbuilding, hydraulic engineering, waterway engineering, land reclamation, dredging, flood protection, water treatment, and energy generation.
Damen Shipyards Group operates 35 shipbuilding and repair yards, employing 12,000 people worldwide. DAMEN has delivered more than 6,000 vessels in more than 100 countries and delivers some 160 vessels annually to customers worldwide. Based on its unique, standardised ship-design concept DAMEN is able to guarantee consistent quality. Damen’s focus on standardisation, modular construction and keeping vessels in stock leads to short delivery times, low ‘total cost of ownership’, high resale values and reliable performance. Furthermore, DAMEN vessels are based on thorough R&D and proven technology. DAMEN offers a wide range of products, including tugs, workboats, naval and patrol vessels, high speed craft, cargo vessels, dredgers, vessels for the offshore industry, ferries, pontoons and superyachts. For nearly all vessel types DAMEN offers a broad range of services, including maintenance, spare parts delivery, training and the transfer of (shipbuilding) know-how. DAMEN also offers a variety of marine components, such as nozzles, rudders, winches, anchors, anchor chains and steel works. DAMEN Shiprepair & Conversion (DSC) has a worldwide network of eighteen repair and conversion yards of which twelve are located in North West Europe. Facilities at the yards include more than 50 floating (and covered) drydocks, including the longest, 420 x 80 metres, and the widest, 405 x 90 metres, as well as slopes, ship lifts and indoor halls. Projects range from the smallest simple repairs through Class’ maintenance to complex refits and the complete conversion of large offshore structures. DSC completes around 1,300 repair and maintenance jobs annually, both at yards as well as in ports and during voyage.
