With two new vessels a Danish shipping company has broken records within both safe, reliable and cost-efficient crew transfers in the offshore wind industry. But this is not all… PES is delighted to bring you a preview of MHO-Co’s ‘green’ hybrid vessels of the future, which are in the pipeline at this very moment.
The two sister vessels ‘MHO Gurli’ and ‘MHO Esbjerg’ were designed by the CEO of MHO-Co Mik Henriksen, who founded the shipping company in 2015. He has a long career in the industry, having built both aluminium ferries and crew transfer vessels, and with he has never concealed his ambitions to challenge and push boundaries within safe and reliable crew transfer, whilst minimizing both the financial and environmental costs of sailing to and from offshore wind farms.
Measuring 39m, holding up to 65 tons of cargo and with enough room for 24 technicians, these sister vessels are the largest offshore wind farm taxis in the world. And indeed, ‘Gurli’ and ‘Esbjerg’ were met by scepticism from the industry, when they were set afloat in January and May 2019, respectively. A scepticism which has long been put to rest.
‘Of course, there were teething problems with a completely redesigned vessel, but we quickly got to grips with them, and now we clearly see that both vessels are performing much better than anticipated, despite the fact that we had raised the bar significantly from the outset. As an example, fuel consumption lies below 400l per hour, where we had expected 550l per hour. That’s a remarkable difference, even if I say so myself,’ enthuses Mik Henriksen.
The low fuel consumption means a lower price for the offshore companies for which MHO-Co charters. However, this is far from the only thing that clients benefit from when hiring the vessels.
The two specially-designed catamarans have been in high seas and have proven to push boundaries even there. With a steady hand, the crews have had no problems with the vessels through a significant wave height of 2m.
