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Kommer Damen winner of the Offshore Support Journal Industry Leader Award 2015 sponsored by Wärtsilä UK

The 2015 Offshore Support Journal Industry Leader Award, sponsored by Wärtsilä UK, was awarded to Kommer Damen live at the Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference, Awards and Exhibition 2015

For a company that only entered the offshore vessel sector fairly recently, Kommer Damen’s Damen Shipyards Group has already enjoyed significant success in the sector. His vision has been at the heart of the phenomenal growth that Damen Shipyards has seen in recent years and its diversification into the offshore vessel market. The company now operates 32 shipyards worldwide and has an annual turnover of over €1.7 billion.

“Offshore vessels are a huge market, and we are investing in more platforms for standardising and building ships,” Mr Damen said when receiving the award. It means the company can build similar types of ships in series at different yards worldwide. “This means cost efficiencies, better vessels, less maintenance and reduced design costs. We can also finance vessels,” he told OSJ, noting that Damen will soon introduce designs for anchor handlers. Under his stewardship, Damen has already developed several designs for the standardised construction of tugs and a range of offshore support vessels, including platform supply vessels (PSVs) and fast supply vessels with the innovative Sea Axe hullform.

Shipyards often unveil ‘paper designs’ for vessels they would like to tempt owners to build, but few of them actually get built. Damen Shipyards is different. In the last few years, it has developed a large number of designs for offshore vessels, seismic vessels and cablelay units and versatile designs that can be adapted for a wide range of tasks. It has also introduced a number of unique hullforms – such as the Damen Axe Bow – and vessels for the offshore wind market. All are being built in large numbers and not just in The Netherlands, the company’s home base. Damen offshore designs are now being built around the world.

That the designs the company develops quickly come to be appreciated by owners and built in series speaks volumes for the kind of vessels the company produces. This ability to home in on new designs that meet owners’ needs, combined with Damen’s ability to mass produce them and work with partners around the world who also build those designs, is surely the key to its success. And the man whose vision is at the heart of its success is Kommer Damen, OSJ’s Industry Leader 2015.

Damen was established in 1927 by two brothers. Nowadays, Damen Shipyards has a leading position in shipbuilding worldwide, with more than 6,000 employees and a presence in 35 countries. Damen has become a multinational company but one that has never lost its family values or its respect for its maritime heritage. The two brothers – Jan and Rien Damen – started the company in a shed next to the family home in 1922. Five years later, they formalised the company as Damen Brothers. It remained a small but prominent boatbuilder until Kommer Damen joined the company. In 1969, Kommer Damen acquired the company from his father and introduced a modular shipbuilding concept into the building of small boats and launches. This concept of standardisation (now called the Damen Standard) has a number of advantages, such as reduced delivery times, reduced costs and the use of proven designs. The concept was an immediate success, and in 1973, the expansion of Damen Shipyards in Gorinchem began.

Damen continued growing, and soon the group started exporting. Because Gorinchem was strategically placed for the dredging industry, auxiliary equipment and workboats were among the vessels built by the yard. Damen’s dredging workboats quickly became the standard in many foreign markets, and Mr Damen saw the opportunity to export more of them. Later on, Mr Damen took over numerous yards specialising in niche markets where he saw an opportunity to invest. The company also began forming partnerships and co-operating with yards all over the world, a process that it continues to employ today.

Since the introduction of the modular shipbuilding concept, Damen has built more than 5,000 vessels. Annually, around 150 vessels are built by the company, and at dedicated shipyards around the world, Damen mass produces standard hulls for particularly popular vessel types – including a fast-growing number of offshore vessels.

A good example of Damen Shipyards Group’s export success was a deal it signed in 2014 with Wilson, Sons in Brazil for two more Damen PSV 5000s, a contract that further strengthened the already high level of co-operation between Damen and Wilson, Sons, which has seen Wilson, Sons build vessels locally using a Damen design, engineering and material package. In fact, Damen and Wilson, Sons have been working together for more than 20 years.

Another good example is a contract with Atlantic Towing in Canada, which recently confirmed it had secured a 10-year firm contract (plus a total of 15 years of options at the charterer’s discretion) with ExxonMobil Canada Properties and Hibernia Management and Development Company (HMDC) for four new PSVs based on an ice-strengthened Damen PSV 5000 design.

Late June 2014 saw another example of a new design from Damen – a DP2 cablelay vessel, Nexus, which is being built for Van Oord and was launched recently at Damen Shipyards Galati. This multipurpose vessel will install cables on offshore windfarms and is based on the Damen Offshore Carrier (DOC) 7500 design. Another version of the DOC design, the DOC 8500, forms the basis of a newbuild cablelay vessel that DeepOcean UK will take on a seven-year charter agreement with Maersk Supply Service. OSJ

2016's Annual Offshore Support Journal conference, awards & exhibition will take place a week earlier than usual, ruinning from the 2nd to the 4th of February.

Kommer Damen winner ot the OSJ Industry Leader Award 2015

Details

  • Gorinchem, Netherlands
  • Kommer Damen