Looking back on a productive first half of 2022

Looking back at the last couple of years, we can see an interesting trend in digitalization.

From being a ‘buzzword’, digitalization became something that almost every industry understood they had to embrace to keep running and keep up to speed. And then, with cloud technology, everything changed again. Today, cloud technology is at the heart of almost every business.

In Kongsberg Digital, we use this to help business scale, as our products re-imagines – literally – how people work by creating smart and dynamic work surfaces that utilizes data from assets, creating a bridge between real time and synthetic data.  

A report published during World Economic Forum in May stated that digital solutions can reduce global emissions by up to 20 percent. Looking at what possibilities lie in this, Kongsberg Digital (now Falkor) is set to help reach this goal – already delivering products that are making a great impact for our clients by transforming data into insights, actions, and automation.

The shipping industry needs to reduce emissions on a large scale to meet the International Maritime Organization (IMO) target to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2050, as well as meet closer benchmarks such as the new EEXI standards to reduce emissions from the existing fleet – coming in January next year. The Norwegian government stated in March that Norway will continue to play a leadership role in developing technologies for a greener maritime industry.

Vessel Insight must be one of the best examples of such technologies. Talking about scaling; earlier this year, MSC, the world biggest container line, choose Kongsberg Digital (now Falkor) to digitalize their entire owned fleet with Vessel Insight.

As the energy sector is going through a transformation to run its operations more efficiently to reduce its carbon emissions, our digital twin Kognitwin^® is now operating numerous assets in the energy sector where its re-imagines how people work through visualization, simulations, and physics-based models. And yes, it’s just as cool as it sounds.

To say at least, the first half of 2022 was eventful. So, let’s do a recap of what happened in the first six months – which was a lot!

Business highlights

Digital ocean

Vessel Insight is Kongsberg Digital’s (Now Falkor) “vessel to cloud” solution. With Vessel Insight, shipowners and operators can unlock the value of data generated by their vessels and fleets through fleet overview, vessel-specific dashboards, and analysis tools. The SaaS-based solution provides vessel-to-cloud data infrastructure, capturing and aggregating quality data in a cost-effective and secure way.

During the first six months of 2022, we have welcomed many new customers and partners to Vessel Insight.

In late February we announced that Asiatic Lloyd Martime signed a contract to digitalize four new container vessels. Some months later, in May, we could announce the signing a fleet of 100 vessels with a large industrial shipowner in the tanker segment. Andreas Jagtøyen, SVP Digital Ocean in Kongsberg Digital (now Falkor), expressed that the signing of this contract marked a shift in the industry.

In June we could proudly present our biggest Vessel Insight contract so far, as MSC, the world’s largest container line, chose Kongsberg Digital (now Falkor) to digitalize their entire owned fleet consisting of approximately 500 vessels, including options.

For Kognitwin Grid, our digital twin for the energy grid sector, we teamed up with OSO Hotwater and Saint John Energy to collaborate on a joint research project to reduce energy peak load and consequently reduce GHG emissions by using Kongsberg Digital’s Digital Twin software Kognitwin grid.

The energy grid sector is vigilant in developing a common CIM profile called “Felles Grunnprofil”. A standard will be crucial to maintain efficient operations between actors in the sector. In May, Kongsberg Digital was part of a major breakthrough in solving this issue by effortlessly importing a grid model into Kognitwin.

Kongsberg Digital is also an important contributor to the new Shell Research and Technology Centre in Amsterdam, demonstrating the key role we play in developing products and solutions for a greener tomorrow, in this case working with one of the largest energy companies in the world.

LedaFlow is Kongsberg Digital’s software-based solution that ensures optimized field design and operation with a low environmental footprint. It allows continuous flow of oil and gas from the reservoir to the processing facilities via pipelines – in a safe, economical, and environmentally friendly way. Now we will expand LedaFlow into simulation of transportation and injection of CO₂ for Carbone Capture and Storage (CCS) as well. In March Kongsberg Digital, together with the computer Modelling Group (CMG), received public funding from the CLIMIT-Demo Program.

This will contribute to enhance LedaFlow into a CCS simulation tool that allows oil companies achieving their NET-ZERO ambitions.  Our plan is to further develop, LedaFlow, a leading simulation software for CO2. One of the objectives of the demo is to expand capabilities for injection of CO2 into depleted oil and gas reservoirs and saline aquifers. We are grateful to receive this public grant from the CLIMIT Program and it will help us realizing our visions to help to decarbonize the oil and gas industry which is a vision we share for all users of LedaFlow.

In May we celebrated twenty years with LedaFlow in a webinar with our partners and customers. We shared our visions for the future and our technical and research-oriented prioritizations. Our ambitions are to contribute to the NetZero society by providing excellent simulation capabilities for multiphase transportation of oil, gas and now CO₂. Flow Assurance is critically needed in the energy transition and LedaFlow will continue to be developed to ensure our customers have a great tool to support their journey to NetZero operations in the years to come.  

Strategic steps

An important strategic business move was acquiring Interconsult Bulgaria Ltd (ICB), a software developer and supplier of process modelling, software architecture design, quality assurance and 3D modelling and design. This way, we secured stable development resources for our three divisions, Digital Energy, Digital Wells, and Digital Ocean.

In 2022 we have been on growing both in terms of business, activity, and people. Recently, we opened our new, fantastic expansion of the Capability Center in Bangalore, India. We also had several colleagues that joined us from Kongsberg Maritime in our Digital Ocean team, expanding our expertise and product portfolio.

What’s to come?

With the second half of 2022 coming in hot, I do know two things: Christmas is coming way too fast, and digitalization will play an increasingly important role in reducing carbon emissions, making operations more efficient and sustainable.

At Kongsberg Digital we extremely proud of what we have accomplished so far, and we can’t wait for what to come. Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn for news, updates, blogs and more as we continue to digitalize the worlds industries through game changing technology – for a better tomorrow.