ADJUSTING THE COURSE AND SPEED TOWARDS THE FUTURE
As Stena Teknik turns 60 years, our Technical Director Ron Gerlach is adjusting the course and speed of our powerhouse for innovation – with the aim to make the organisation more capable to drive change in a changing world.
“Stena Teknik is one of Stena’s crown jewels. We may have been a bit humble over the years, but now we are ready to step out in the lime-light. We intend to be more proactive in our role as technical experts. Our innovation heritage is an outstanding foundation for gaining momentum in Stena’s journey towards the future,” Ron says.
Over its 60 years, the combined brainpower of Stena Teknik has been involved in almost one hundred Stena newbuilds, covering 12 different vessel types: RoPax, RoRo, HSS catamarans, drilling rigs, drill ships, platform support, diving support, well stimulation, bunker tankers, crude oil tankers, product tankers, and chemical tankers.
“We are probably unique in the marine world. It’s hard to imagine that any other shipping company has all that knowledge inhouse. They have to buy parts, or all of it, from external companies. This means that they don’t have the future in their own hands, as we do,” Ron says.
Ron Gerlach took over as Technical Director when Harry Robertsson retired two years ago. However, the German national is definitely no rookie in the Stena organisation. Since joining Stena in 2003 he has held key positions within Northern Marine and Stena Line, where Ron was Trade Director, Germany before taking up his present position.
“I am very grateful to Stena for getting opportunities to experience many different parts of the company. Over the years, I have worked with newbuilds, technical management and commercial operations. The scopes have included different ship types and spending many years at shipyards in South Korea and China.”
With that brief look in the rearview mirror, we will shift focus to what lies ahead of Stena Teknik.
Ron Gerlach, Technical Director, Stena Teknik. Elisabet Liljeblad, Head of Climate & Energy Transition, Stena Teknik.
“We will become progressive and less receptive. Aligning with global requirements and becoming a stronger force in society require agility, and that will affect how we work going forward,” Ron explains and continues:
“Everybody is talking about decarbonizing nowadays. We have been working with energy efficiency for decades, so we have got what it takes to be a driving force in those discussions and developments. So we must be out there and advocate what we do, and what we aim to achieve in the future.”
The external ambitions include joining international partnerships and bringing views and ideas forward in technical summits. In addition, becoming a more proactive organisation also applies to the way Stena Teknik acts internally. How does Ron want to position his organisation in the Stena society?
“We will be the networking hub for technology within the company. A platform for leveraging strengths, exchanging knowledge and facilitating initiatives. This doesn’t only include ships. Solutions that work in ships can be useful in other areas as well,” Ron says.
“There are experts on key innovation areas in most parts of the company, but If they don’t talk to each other, there is a risk that the best ideas don’t reach all corners of the organisation. Stena will become much stronger if work we appear as one aligned team, accumulating all our strengths. We want to become the hub for achieving that,” he continues.
Regular Tech Talks have been a platform for enabling Stena Teknik’s experts to show colleagues what they are capable of and recently the team has also moved into a new, purposeful office at the headquarters on Masthuggskajen in Gothenburg.
The space is designed to promote teamwork – and Ron has created a leadership team with experts in newbuilds, projects and procurement as well as sustainability, energy, data and analysis. Traditional focus areas blended with subjects that are key to future success.
“Most of us, including myself, at Stena Teknik are Naval Architects. Over the past two years, we have employed quite a number of young talents with different backgrounds, for example science and environmental law, which really creates a more diverse and international team,” Ron says and concludes with a smile:
“People from other parts of the company are always welcome. Bring your ideas and pop into our office for a coffee and a chat. Or why don’t you stay a while longer and spend part of your professional career with us? I promise that it will be very exciting.”
THE ENERGY TRANSITION IS HERE
The world is transitioning to a cleaner future. Yes, oil majors have recently dropped climate commitments, yes the UK has given a go-ahead for one of its biggest oil and gas projects in years, yes temperature records have been broken also this summer extending into fall. Yet, there is a massive movement towards a clean energy future that trumps the fossils. According to IEA, 1.7 out of the 2.8 trillion USD in energy investment in 2023 will go to clean tech. China is a major driver, where the other big players are the US, EU, and Japan. Regulatory bodies are pushing industry forward, EU with the FitFor55 package and targets for renewable energy, and IMO with its net-zero updated greenhouse gas strategy, to mention a few. The transition is here, and not following suit will soon turn out to be too costly.
Last year, Stena Teknik reorganised and created a new section in Sustainability & Energy, focusing on the energy transition fully anchored in science and data. This includes deciphering the regu-latory environment, in particular the liquid green fuels, updates in the market on biobased fuels, strategic planning tools to enable a data-informed decision making and driving projects enabling a cheaper transition for the shipping business units. An important part of the work is spreading awareness in the energy transition by tapping into the knowledge in-house and doing that through collaborative
groups and the recently launched Environmental Hub. As part of this, Stena Teknik has created a series of shorter articles on the energy transition to improve awareness in the field. The opening two articles are centered around electric vehicles, where the first one approaches the sustainability aspect, and the second one centers around safety aspects.
