The marine energy business unit of French shipbuilder Chantiers de l’Atlantique, Atlantique Offshore Energy, has won contracts to carry out preventive maintenance on two substations for future French offshore wind farms.

The multi-year maintenance contracts will see Atlantique Offshore Energy provide associated services on electrical substations on the Éoliennes en Mer Îles d’Yeu et de Noirmoutier (EMYN) and Eoliennes en Mer Dieppe Le Tréport (EMDT) offshore wind farms.

The two offshore wind farms are developed by Ocean Winds, Sumitomo Corporation, and Banque des Territoires. The trio is joined by Vendee Energie on the EMYN project.

The EMYN project is currently under construction and it is expected to be completed by the end of 2025. It will consist of 61 wind turbines with a capacity of 8MW each. The electrical substation was installed in mid-June 2024.

The wind farm will have a total capacity of 496MW and produce approximately 1.9GWh per year, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 800,000 people.

The EMDT offshore wind farm will have 62 8MW wind turbines and the offshore substation is being built by Chantiers de l’Atlantique. Completion of construction is set for the end of 2026.

The UK has announced the Clean Industry Bonus (CIB), a new incentive scheme looking to increase investments in the offshore wind sector and push the country closer to its goal of decarbonising its energy system by 2030.

The scheme will provide an initial £27m ($33.5m) in funding for every gigawatt of capacity from offshore wind projects.

To qualify for the CIB, developers must commit at least £100m per gigawatt for fixed-bottom offshore wind farms and £50m per gigawatt for floating offshore wind farms.

If an application for the project exceeds the minimum investment standards it will be considered for the incentive. The CIB application window will close on April 14. Following the application window, the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will assign a score to submitted CIB extra proposals.

The UK has already revealed plans to expand its current offshore wind capacity from 15GW to between 43GW and 50GW by 2030. The UK’s grid operator did say last year that the government’s target to source 95% of power from clean energy was a major but attainable challenge.

The country will hold more renewable auctions later this year, in which developers will bid for government-backed price guarantees on generated electricity. The new funding will be awarded through the contracts given in these auctions.

The Lloyd’s Register-backed Rewriting Women into Maritime History initiative to uncover and showcase the critical role of women in the maritime sector, past and present has entered a new, international phase.

Launched in the UK and Ireland in 2023, the programme uses archival material held by maritime organisations, as well as oral histories to piece together their stories, showcasing them publicly through the SHE_SEES exhibition. SHE_SEES debuted at the home of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) during London International Shipping Week 2023, and is currently on tour, with a residency at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard until August 2025.

By highlighting the expertise, experience and leadership of women, the programme helps reframe the narrative of a predominantly masculine industry and encourages more people to take up the opportunities offered by a career in the maritime sector today. Figures from the IMO show that women currently account for 29% of the overall industry workforce, and just 2% of seafarers in the crewing workforce.

Now, Rewriting Women into Maritime History and the SHE_SEES exhibition are looking to expand their impact internationally, by telling the stories of women working in the maritime sector in another nine countries around the world. These stories will be captured over the next three years, starting in 2025 with Greece, the Netherlands and India.

The contemporary component of SHE_SEES is led by portrait photographer Emilie Sandy who is encouraging more women to get involved and share their own stories via the participatory photography element, SHE_SEES HER VOICE. This will enable a broader range of women in the sector to connect and be represented, working with a photographer to empower them to share their own stories, and to shape and control their own narrative.

Dr Jo Stanley, a maritime historian specialising in gender and diversity, commented: “Women have been contributing to maritime life for centuries. Seagoing doctors and pirates, laundresses and captain’s deputies, navigation teachers and cartographers. They’ve been overlooked. But from the 1970s, they really took off. And they’re making progress fast. This project encouragingly connects past, present and future.”

Linked to the initiative, a new film – Women in Shipbuilding – has been produced in collaboration with Historic England uncovering the history of women in shipbuilding in the UK, viewable below.

Japan’s largest shipowner has teamed up with a top yard and tech firm Furukawa Electric to trial a laser system to remove rust and coatings from a bulk carrier. 

Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) worked with Tsuneishi Shipbuilding to use Furukawa’s InfraLaser system when a bulk carrier went in for a regular dry dock. 

“During ship repairs, rust and coatings are removed for hull inspection and repainting. However, the current sandblasting method, which removes rust and coatings by blasting abrasive materials against the surface, scatters waste materials and removed paint as debris, necessitating recovery efforts,” MOL explained in a release. 

By replacing sandblasting with a laser blasting method that generates minimal waste, dust, and noise, MOL expects to reduce environmental impact and improve occupational health.

MOL said it aims to make the use of laser blasting more common place going forward, also touting the system’s robot, saving labour costs. 

Retaining seafarers has improved slightly over the past year, thanks in part to salary raises, the annual Crew Managers’ Survey by Danica Crewing Specialists has revealed.

In its survey of in-house crew managers in shipowning and shipmanagement companies, almost 90% reported that they had increased salaries in 2024. Only 7% said they had not raised crew wages over the past year. Companies were more generous too – with increases above those reported in the 2023 survey, except for junior ratings.

Retention rates are reported to have improved. The survey reveals that the fluctuation of seafarers has generally reduced, with 41% of crew managers reporting that the retention rate has improved during the past 12 months, compared to only 29% in the previous survey period. However, 23% of companies did say they felt the retention rate has worsened, although this is a decrease compared to the 36% in the 2023/24 survey.

Overall, the findings of Danica’s Crew Managers’ Survey 2024 showed a positive improvement, with fewer respondents saying the recruitment situation had worsened over 2024. However, still about a third (31%) found that the intake of new competent hands has become worse or much worse in the past 12 months, although this is down from the 46% saying the same in 2023. 

Henrik Jensen, CEO of Danica Crewing Specialists, commented: “This indicates that it is not a shortage of seafarers which concerns crew managers but rather a shortage of competent seafarers.”

Spire Global is suing Kpler, claiming the Belgian tech firm has failed to follow through on its plans to buy Spire Maritime, an AIS data provider. 

On November 13 last year, Spire Global entered into a share purchase agreement with Kpler to sell its maritime business. Since then, however, Kpler has failed to consummate the closing, Spire Global stated in a release. 

“Buyer has cited various reasons for declining to close, which the company has rejected,” Spire Global stated, revealing that it has filed a complaint in the Delaware Court of Chancery this week in a bid to get the deal done, warning shareholders that it faces significant debt problems if the Kpler acquisition fails to go through, something that has seen Spire Global’s share price tank in recent days. 

Kpler has made several noticeable acquisitions in recent years. Back in 2021, the company acquired New York-headquartered cargo data company ClipperData and last year it bought two well-known ship tracking brands, MarineTraffic and FleetMon.