Alfa Laval PureBallasts Peter Sahlén sees demand for transparency

Speaking on the first day of the Chinese New Year, Peter Sahlén, Head of Alfa Laval PureBallast, was keen to share his perspective on the outlook for 2021.

In common with other suppliers, Alfa Laval expects to see a surge in new orders over the course of 2021, as ship owners book in ballast water management system installations to meet compliance dates falling due in 2022, Sahlén said, citing DNV and ClassNK analyses.

“One of the unusual characteristics of the peak is the proportion of ship owners of smaller sized fleets who will be booking in installations,” Sahlén said.

Alfa Laval has been preparing to meet this expected surge in orders from an operational perspective. Sahlén noted that the company had been building up inventories at its main production facility in Aalborg, Denmark in order to meet expected demand.

The company has a fast track solution for a limited number of the most popular PureBallast 3 model sizes.

“We know that some of the ship owners are likely to delay ordering until the last minute and we are prepared to meet requests for short lead times.”

Alfa Laval has been operating with higher inventory levels at Aalborg following the introduction of production changes in 2020 during an earlier stage of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The changes, such as segregated shift patterns, have helped us to maintain production over the course of 2020. In fact, we set a new production record in 2020, delivering over 1,000 units, and we have started 2021 in similar fashion.”

Need for transparency

Sahlén also noted that owners were likely to be looking for a reliable source of information regarding different systems, as well as the specific operational requirements of their own vessels.

Back in August 2020, Alfa Laval set up an online portal, Compliance Navigator, to bring together the certification of different BWMS producers. The data source also allows ship owners to compare the operational requirements of their fleet, by comparing their vessels’ route planning with the characteristics of the waters they are passing through.

“This allows ship owners to compare any hold time, salinity, temperature or UVT limitations based on their operational profiles,” Sahlén said.

Compliance Navigator offers transparency around system design limitations or system performance for customers. “Even if a ballast water treatment system is certified, it may not get your vessel where it needs to go,” Sahlén said.

He cited the example of a number of large LNG carriers, which had opted for Alfa Laval’s UV-based system rather than competing EC-based solutions on the basis of the system’s performance in cold, low salinity waters at higher latitudes, as an example of the advantages of transparency for Alfa Laval itself.

Vessel specific solutions

Turning to specific vessel solutions, Sahlén noted that Alfa Laval’s Bulker Fit solution was attracting significant interest from ship owners and operators in Europe and Asia.

The solution was tailored to the specific requirements of bulker vessels, where the variation between ballasting and deballasting requirements can significantly affect BWMS system requirements.

“We recently signed a major fleet agreement with a Greece-based premium bulk carrier,” Sahlén said, “and have also signed orders from smaller operators in Asia and China.” The asymmetric capacities offers operating capacity advantages.

In the tanker market, where Alfa Laval offers a tailored Tanker Fit solution. The Alfa Laval PureBallast 3 Ex deckhouse solution offers a practical solution for tankers equipped with submersible cargo pumps. “It also offers a convenient one-stop solution for ship owners, rather than having to manage the logistics of ordering and managing various components themselves.”

The solution has attracted strong interest, particularly from the MR tanker segment, where Alfa Laval has a long standing reputation for flexibility.

Service network

Sahlén concluded by briefly looking back at Alfa Laval’s experiences in 2020. While the pandemic had accelerated a trend towards remote services, and Alfa Laval had seen demand increase for its services, such as Compliance Service and PureBallast Connect, there was no alternative to physical attendance for some services.

Alfa Laval’s global network of 160 service engineers had allowed services to continue, avoiding the impact of global travel restrictions on centralised pools of engineers.

“This meant that we were able to conduct service calls on our systems. We are always available for our customers through our 24/7 with our global service network.” The advantages also extended to the installation and commissioning processes, many of which Alfa Laval was able to manage itself, Sahlén concluded.