ECOsubsea Raises USD 12M To Accelerate The Green Transformation Of The Shipping Industry

The Series B financing round led by the Blue Ocean fund, managed by leading sustainable investor SWEN Capital Partners, enables Norwegian hull cleaning specialist to scale up its operations on its mission to provide sustainable and competitive hull cleaning globally.

Hull cleaning to remove biofouling is essential to increase vessel performance, save fuel and reduce emissions. The big differentiator for ECOsubsea’s world-leading technology is that it can clean and capture biofouling in a closed loop system, enabling sustainable cleaning of ships and preventing non-native organisms, toxins and microplastics from polluting marine environments.

ECOsubsea robotic hull cleaner at work on a berthed vessel (Photo: ECOsubsea)

Biofouling causes the shipping industry to waste more than 100 million tons of CO2 and USD 20bn every year. The global cost of invasive alien species is upwards of USD 423bn per year and is a contributing factor in 60% of species extinctions.

Sustainable and scalable

“We are leaders in the sustainable hull cleaning space. The current practice of uncontrolled release of hazardous waste into the marine environment is not sustainable. Our service is provided in parallel with port operations, it is compatible with all coating types and can be used on any vessel. This is key to ensure a rapid customer uptake and makes it highly scalable. The support from Swen Capital Partners is supercharging our quest to make sustainable hull cleaning widely available and affordable (providing customers a payback of as little as 5 days). Our goal is to clean a 400-meter container vessel in under 12 hours,” says ECOsubsea CEO Tor M Østervold.

ECOsubsea robotic hull cleaner shown with shore connection pipe (Photo: ECOsubsea)

Proven in the field

Submerged robotic ‘vacuum cleaners’ move over the ship’s hull, gently removing biofouling and capturing the debris in a multi-layered processing system. The closed loop system protects local biodiversity from pollutants and alien species. The merits of ECOsubsea’s technology have been demonstrated on more than 1000 vessels in the most stringent environmentally regulated ports, servicing all major shipping segments, including containers, cruise, RoRo, bulkers, tankers, Navies and offshore rigs.

Julie Peyrache, Investment Director of Paris-based SWEN’s Blue Ocean fund, adds: “We’re thrilled to be supporting ECOsubsea in its commercial development and applaud their vision to make a positive impact on the oceans. This major investment occurs at a unique moment when both the company and the market are at an inflection point. The impact on fuel consumption reduction and on the spread of invasive species (one of the main causes of Earth’s ongoing biodiversity crisis) is immediate. This Series B is the first step to expand the activity and we hope to get more investors onboard to accelerate the global reach of ECOsubsea.”

Boosting availability

ECOsubsea currently operates in Europe. By extending its global reach to key shipping hubs in Asia, Middle East and the Americas, it aims to lower the overall cost of sustainable hull cleaning while serving new locations where the service has not previously been available.

Press Release

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