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With the wish to change traditional thinking regarding choice of materials in the Danish offshore sector, AluCluster approached Offshore Centre Denmark, a cluster focussing mainly on offshore wind, oil and gas. Traditionally, the Danish offshore sector has mainly been using steel as construction material and in a sector with a great focus on safety – traditions are not easy to break. With all materials you have to utilise the advantages and limit the influence of the weaker properties. However, at first stage you may exclude the disadvantages and think out of the box – where would it make sense to use a construction material that is light, strong and has good corrosion properties? In offshore oil and gas huge potential lies in reducing weight of topstructures at oil drilling sites which can provide access to oil reservoirs that is out of reach today. Combining the material knowledge at AluCluster with the experience and contact with the offshore oil and gas sector at OCD a suitable case was selected for further studies. AluCluster carefully selected a group of companies with special competences and experience. The companies should be “state of the art” within their area of expertise and furthermore it was important that there were no direct competitors which could limit exchange of knowledge and innovative ideas. Value chain thinking has been a key criteria used for selection of the group in order to obtain a solid and performance competitive unit. The group was gathered to a brainstorm activity – not just with respect to optimise existing construction, but really out of the box thinking. A completely new design utilising the mechanical and physical properties of aluminium and limiting the influence of the weaker properties was suggested. A weight reduction of the construction of more than 50% seems to be accomplished. This was only possible do to the combination specialised companies and the fact that competition was not existing. OCD has presented the pre-project to relevant parties and it is expected to be continued in a larger project, involving complete design and verification of the structure – leading to profit for both end-user and subcontractors. First finalised structure is expected to be in production during 2012 opening international market potential for the involved companies.
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There is no doubt that the result so far has been innovative since the proposed technical solution includes both new structural design as well as new material. The group will continue collaboration and in the next step of the project further expertise as well as end-users will be included. This will result in even more collaboration opportunities for the group.
For the time being it is difficult to talk about any economic profit etc. However, there is no doubt that the pre-project has opened new business opportunities and the very positive feedback from end-users has convinced us that there will be economic impact of the continued project.
The economic impact will be at both subcontractor and end-user level and result in new jobs. When finalized, export opportunities within a large and economic attractive international market will be opened. Realisation of the project will internationalise both clusters and companies which in next step will partner up with European expertise.
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SubCPartner:
”Weight reduction of dimensions and huge marketing and turnover perspectives for our company.”
Aluminium Manager Mads Obling Rasmussen
Sjølund Profilvalseteknik:
”Good and effective project management in a group of competent partners with relevant core competences. Everyone in the group has contributed despite any possible special interests. All in all a very positive progress.”
Manager Director Søren Ravn
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