Wärtsilä and DNV GL partner to contribute to marine industry’s ongoing digital transformation

Roger Holm, President, Wärtsilä Marine and Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen, CEO, DNV GL – Maritime

(PRESS RELEASE) HELSINKI, 10-Feb-2020 — /EuropaWire/ — Wärtsilä announces collaboration with classification society DNV GL. In a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Roger Holm, President, Wärtsilä Marine and Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen, CEO, DNV GL – Maritime, both companies agreed to work together to contribute to the marine industry’s ongoing digital transformation. Wärtsilä and DNV GL plan to further explore the potential use of digital technologies, collaborative data sharing, and standardisation to improve existing products and services, and to develop new ones.

The prime focus of the collaboration will be on digital technologies and big data in classification and the requirements for their use. Technologies applied in the scope of autonomous ships, advanced remote services, new bridge technologies, and data sharing will be examined in this project. Another natural area of cooperation will be on cyber security.

Roger Holm, President, Wärtsilä Marine, commented: “The marine industry stands to benefit enormously from our rapidly expanding and unprecedented capabilities in collecting, compiling, processing, analysing, and distributing data digitally. Wärtsilä is committed to leading this digital transformation that will undoubtedly lead to greater efficiencies, better safety, and sustainability. We look forward to working with DNV GL to accelerate this transformation.”

Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen, CEO, DNV GL – Maritime, explained: “At DNV GL, we are committed to using digitalization to help our customers extract the maximum value from their data. Working together with Wärtsilä, we can identify and minimize the barriers to data sharing, provide innovative class and assurance services, and find ways to capitalize on the new possibilities this opens up for shipping. Enabling greater sharing requires building trust, and DNV GL has worked to enable this, for example with our independent platform Veracity which provides seamless sharing, while ensuring the quality of data and algorithms our customers rely on.”

Andrea Morgante, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Wärtsilä Marine, added: “This important collaboration between a marine industry technology leader and the world’s leading classification society will help to standardise and shape the regulatory environment, and will also enable the innovations needed for the sector to achieve the decarbonisation goals set out by the IMO. The IMO’s target is to cut absolute greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent from 2008 levels by the year 2050.”

Wärtsilä and DNV GL noted that digital transformation developments can have an immediate and transformative impact on operations and existing business models.

About Wärtsilä
Wärtsilä is a global leader in smart technologies and complete lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. By emphasising sustainable innovation, total efficiency and data analytics, Wärtsilä maximises the environmental and economic performance of the vessels and power plants of its customers. In 2019, Wärtsilä’s net sales totalled EUR 5.2 billion with approximately 19,000 employees. The company has operations in over 200 locations in more than 80 countries around the world. Wärtsilä is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki.

About DNV GL – Maritime:
DNV GL is the world’s leading classification society and a recognized advisor for the maritime industry. We enhance safety, quality, energy efficiency and environmental performance of the global shipping industry – across all vessel types and offshore structures. We invest heavily in research and development to find solutions, together with the industry, that address strategic, operational or regulatory challenges. For more information visit http://www.dnvgl.com/maritime/index.html

For media information, please contact:

Marit Holmlund-Sund
General Manager, Positioning, Marine Business Marketing
Wärtsilä Corporation
Tel: +358 10 709 1439
marit.holmlund-sund@wartsila.com

SOURCE: Wärtsilä