Huisman is a Dutch company specializing in designing and building heavy construction equipment such as offshore cranes, pipeline and drilling systems.
The company, headquartered in Schiedam, was founded in 1929 as a steel construction company.
Today, Huisman is one of the world's key players in markets such as renewable energy, oil and gas. The company employs more than 2,500 people across branches in nine countries. Huisman is an indispensable supplier to offshore wind farm installers such as Hafvram of Norway. At the end of 2023, Hafvram took advantage of the green cover to purchase two wind turbine installation vessels. The vessels are made in China but two Dutch suppliers are involved, namely Huisman for the cranes and Gusto MSC for the so-called "jack-up system.
We spoke to Cees van Veluw, Product Director Cranes at Huisman. "Havfram hasn't been around that long, but we have been in contact with them from the start in 2020. And Huisman is really into long-term relationships, that's what we like to invest in. Our customers often have challenges that require an innovative solution. And then we try to find a reliable technical solution for that together with our customers."
For this particular transaction, Hafvram wanted to use cranes from Huisman, which are well suited to installing large offshore wind turbines. These offshore wind turbines are getting higher and higher and heavier equipment is needed to install them.
In 2025, the cranes that will be mounted on the ships Norse Wind and Norse Energi will be delivered. There will be several cranes on both ships, and the capacity of these cranes is even sufficient to install a reasonable foundation.
The life cycles of wind turbine models are relatively short and development is then very expensive. On the other hand, the European Commission sees offshore wind as a strategic industry for Europe. Therefore, they want to continue supporting healthy companies. This is also necessary because financeability for greening products is made increasingly difficult. Nevertheless, European customers are now still leading in the world when it comes to offshore wind installations.
Cees van Veluw: "It is clear that there is certainly still support for the offshore wind industry. On the other hand, however, there is virtually no more support possible for transactions in the fossil industry, where we also achieve a significant part of our turnover. And we do find that a shame, because we are a front runner when it comes to technological solutions. As long as oil and gas are needed, we also have to keep working as green as possible in this industry. We are developing safer and more efficient equipment that provides much lower emissions. Nevertheless, we will no longer take certain transactions because the risk is too high without Atradius Dutch State Business' cover."
This transaction by Hafvram provides a lot of employment opportunities. The factory in Schiedam is expressly involved in this project and this provides employment for hundreds of people. But Cees van Veluw also sees interesting developments for the future. Because there is increasing demand from the US for offshore wind, but there is also a lot of potential in Asia, especially in Japan.
As long as governments worldwide and our clients are committed to meeting global climate goals, we at Huisman will remain relevant and continue to develop technical products to enable and accelerate sustainable energy projects.
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