MEET THE MEMBER – FCR FINLAND
Meet our member FCR Finland, a marine industry turnkey provider with a strong focus on R&D. This interview was held at Visitor and Innovation Centre Joki, for some of the latest FCR innovations were on display at Joki’s exhibition area!
Who are you? Ari Nousiainen, I´m working in FCR Finland as R&D manager.
What is your company specialized in? Our company is originally specialized in cruise ships refurbishment business but nowadays we also have projects in newbuildings. We are a turnkey supplier in cruise ships both for public areas and cabin areas. In R&D which I lead at FCR, we concentrate on supporting our basic business by doing new products and solutions to building process. Also new products to launch to shipbuilding markets and new business creation possibilities to FCR are in my focus.
Tell us about your clients and other key shareholders or partners? Our refurbishment project customers are the largest cruise ship owners in the world, such as Carnival, RCCL and NCL. In newbuildings we currently have projects to Turku shipyard. If we talk about products that our R&D is launching, we use them by ourselves to get competitive advantage and in selected cases to advance getting new business. Typically, our new products are used in shipbuilding by the owners, shipyards or network companies.
Our focus in R&D is to improve the cost competitiveness, modularisation, energy efficiency and sustainability of our products. This year we have launched some new products and there is still a number of products coming that support those values and I hope these products and solutions reach also wider scope in marine industry.
What services or products do you offer to other YardMate members? In general we do turnkey projects “from steel to steel” but when we talk about our R&D developed products we have products and solutions to interior works and cabin area solutions. We are IMO classified and have launched e.g. a ceramic coating product that can be used for covering and to protect tile and steel/aluminium surfaces with any RAL colour or transparent coating. Our product is called CerCo and it gives durable and strong surface with high wear and chemical resistance.
Another new product is a new type of wet unit floor concept. It is durable and lightweight, up to 68 % lighter than some competitors’ equivalent in market. With this concept it should also be noted that it is a fully waterproof structure with good insulation and sustainability values. I´m proud to say that with our building method we are using even 50 % recycled materials of total weight and recyclability of the new product is even 80 %. These values are more than four times better than the known competitors’ values.
In the near future we shall bring out a fire classified light-weight panel construction where the weight is minimum 30 % lighter than the competitors’ equivalent, 100 % waterproof, made at least 70 % of recycled materials and recyclability up to 90 %.
What are your expectations for YardMate? We hope that YardMate concept will help us introduce our new products and connect us to potential customers and of course support the growth of Finnish maritime business.
What are your future needs regarding personnel? Today we are desperately seeking skilled project managers and also persons who have a good motivation to work in challenging cruise ships building works. Hopefully in the near future we have capability to start supporting our new products to market and there we need both sellers and also skilled specialists to do and implement our new products to our future customers’ use.
b) And regarding sub-contractors and partners? We continuously try to implement new ways of working together to collaborate with companies in our network and we welcome new partners to participate in the FCR way of working.
If you are interested in new product R&D, please contact ari.nousiainen@fcr-finland.fi. For FCR ongoing activities and recruiting possibilities, please contact mikko.varjanne@fcr-finland.fi.
Anything else you wish to say to us? I see that YardMate is an opportunity to Finnish shipbuilding companies to collaborate in a network and also to get new contacts in business. I wish YardMate will have great success and together we finally get Finnish shipbuilding companies to work together, not to compete with each other. Cruise ship newbuilding and refurbishment markets are in a historical market demand. Business is growing so rapidly that we should combine our forces to get the “Finnish share” from markets. We should start to collaborate and also push our political and governmental members and other authorities to support Finnish maritime industry. Maritime industry could really be the missed new Nokia if we combined our national forces at all levels.
And what can I say to Ari’s closing remark but that I totally agree!
Photos by FCR Finland and Annika Perho