Dutch Minister Visits Damen Shipyards

Netherlands Minister of infrastructure and water management Cora van Nieuwenhuizen visited Rotterdam on 28 January to meet Damen Shipyards Group and other Dutch maritime industry leaders.

During the visit Minister of Nieuwenhuizen attended presentations on board a Damen ship, FCS 2610.

The ship sailed from the head office of Hatenboer-Water in Schiedam, along the Nieuwe Maas, to the head office of Van Oord in Rotterdam.

René Berkvens, CEO of the Damen Group, said: “We were happy to welcome Minister Van Nieuwenhuizen to Rotterdam, and we appreciate her continued interest in, and strong support of, our maritime sector. Face-to-face meetings like this help to inform the government policies, programmes, regulations and infrastructure changes needed to foster new technologies and business growth.”

Three industry leaders gave the minister presentations on innovations and developments in: maritime technology (speaker Bas Buchner, President, Maritime Research Institute Netherlands); water technology (speaker Willem Buijs, CEO of Hatenboer-Water); and delta technology (speaker Hendrik Postma, Chairman of the Association of Marine Contractors).

Other participants contributed to the themes of ‘clean’, ‘smart’ and ‘safe’. These were respectively: speaker Peter Paul van Voorst, Founder of Skoon Energy; speaker Toine Cleophas, Manager Research at Damen Shipyards Group; and four students from Delft University of Technology, who demonstrated new emergency flotation and stability devices.

Particular topics included ‘better ships, cleaner oceans’, private-public partnerships, autonomous shipping, electric shipping, digitalisation, and ship management mobile apps.