Van Oord christens fifth USV as new CEO takes over

Van Oord has held the christening ceremony for its fifth unmanned autonomous survey vessel (USV), developed jointly with DEMCON Unmanned Systems.

The VO:X Barentsz USV came after Van Oord’s in-house survey department and DEMCON Unmanned Systems jointly developed and operated four USVs in the past years.

According to Van Oord, this new larger vessel is an evolution of the four other USVs, building upon the same hardware and software USV platform system and expanding with new technologies and more functionalities for offshore operations.

VO:X Barentsz was christened by Lucienne van Leeuwen-Koper, wife of Michel Koper who is the Director Survey at Van Oord, on April 25 at the Van Oord head office jetty in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

The christening ceremony also marked the farewell of Pieter van Oord who led Van Oord as CEO for over 15 years and has been with the company for a total of 30, as well as the inaugural official act of the new CEO Govert van Oord, the fifth-generation CEO for the family-owned company.

Van Oord also christened two new hybrid water injection dredgers, Rijn and Rhône, said to be among the most sustainable water injection dredgers to date and will have the ultra low emission vessel (ULEV) notation of the classification society.

The Dutch marine contractor christened its second cable-laying vessel (CLV) Calypso in September 2023, mostly used for installing inter-array and export cables for offshore wind projects.

The hybrid vessel has future-ready engines with built-in flexibility to anticipate e-fuels aside from the ability to run on biofuel. In addition, it has a large battery pack, a shore supply connection, and an energy management system, which is expected to result in a more energy-efficient vessel, with significantly reduced CO2, NOx, and SOx emissions.