One-on-One: Sameer Kalra, President, Marine, Alfa Laval
Tech leaders across maritime have the unenviable task of plotting for, at best, a fuzzy future. Make no mistake, the mission is clear: emission reduction leading to decarbonization. But the means to that end – and the realistic timeframe to get there – is less than clear. Sit with Sameer Kalra, President, Marine, Alfa Laval for awhile and it becomes abundantly clear he has a firm handle on the means to make money for Alfa Laval today while funding the technologies that will power the company’s future.
Sameer Kalra, six years in as President, Marine, Alfa Laval, has a history that is not unlike many heard from maritime executives: starting out as a marine engineer in a boiler suit sailing on ships. Today he oversees a large and expanding portfolio of marine technology to serves the needs of ships today and tomorrow. “Onboard a vessel, we’re the biggest secret in plain sight. The water that you drink onboard; Alfa Laval’s water maker is delivering it. The emissions from the funnel; most likely there is Alfa Laval equipment cleaning it up. The fuel that goes into the engine that propel the vessel; an Alfa Laval piece of equipment has most likely cleaned it. We work with three big technology areas: heat transfer, separation, and fluid handling.”
Last but not the least is the company’s most recent acquisition: StormGeo and with it a world of digital solution possibilities. Today, Kalra looks over approximately 20+ independent product verticals, but more than simply pushing product, Kalra said Alfa Laval has emerged a remit for experience and guidance, particularly when it comes to decarbonization. “When customers are looking for solutions in this energy transition, Alfa Laval is a place you would come. We are a knowledge center.”
Business Drivers
Maritime is in a transcendent period, with digitalization, decarbonization and autonomy collectively impacting ships and ship systems. But Kalra said the real driver today for Alfa Laval, and shipowners, is clear. “No matter where you are in the industrial supply chain, the one thing you can’t escape is how the energy transition will impact your portfolio. If I go back just five to seven years, our legacy products were built around one fuel that had been around for 100 years: heavy fuel, oil and gas oil.”
“I sailed between 1983 to 1993, and I sailed only on heavy fuel oil,” said Kalra. “In those 10 years sailing on the same fuel oil, the engines become a bit more efficient, but if I look at the machinery on board, in my time, probably the only thing that really developed in a big way was the incineration and oily water separation.”
Fast track 30 years and the view on the ship, from the bridge to the engine room, is completely different, in some ways unrecognizable to someone who last sailed in 1993. “I was not that imaginative when I left shipping [to visualize] what the future may look like,” said Kalra, “ but today I’m so fascinated. I think this is reflection of how innovative we are in an industry and how we have slowly pushed the boundaries.”
For Alfa Laval the trick today is staying relevant with shipowners regardless of fuel, a transition for the company, too, as new fuels mean new challenges, and the requisite need for investment to find solutions. “Today we are now fit for purpose for biofuels, methanol, and gas,” said Kalra. “Next step, transition to make sure that they can also do ammonia, too, for example.” The only certainty today in maritime is uncertainty, as there is no definitive ‘fuel of the future’ that fits all needs. The key now and in the future is flexibility.
“Neither I, nor you, nor anyone has this crystal ball to say which fuel is going to be the future fuel in the world,” said Kalra. “Quite possibly there will not be a one-size-fits-all (fuel solution); I don’t see ammonia going on a cruise ship which is carrying 3000 passenger; nor do I see small product tankers going to Sandakan in Malaysia and having green methanol available in the storage tanks.”
So the key for Alfa Laval, too, is flexibility, investment and patience, saying his primary focus is making sure that the company’s portfolio is “fit for purpose for the needs ahead.”
“We are doing a lot of cool stuff … wind propulsion, air lubrication, etc. … but none of this is a profit pool that can fund itself today; it’s what we have that is funding the future,” said Kalra. “Much of my energy goes into making sure that what we have is competitive, relevant, and it is something that can make sure that the ship owners can sail and say: ‘This is future-proof [regardless of the future fuel mix]. I know Alfa Laval has solutions to make sure I can transition to the new fuel.’ This is what we are built on, this is what we are famous for.” Alfa Laval’s foray into wind propulsion is one example, “this is not something we had on our radar three years ago,” said Kalra. “But we decided if energy efficiency is going to be important, clean energy is going to be important, so why not develop a technology area which will stay relevant 10 years from today, 20 years from today and maybe even 100 years from today.” With that, for first time in its history, it recruited an engineer who had been trained in aeronautical engineering.
When talk turns to shipowner demands, in the area of fuels the narrative has changed. “Two years ago, everyone was clamoring for solutions around methanol and ammonia. But today, everyone recognizes that in the short- to medium-term, clean fuels; green methanol, green ammonia, are not available at scale.” The industrial supply chain behind ammonia is not ready. And the narrative has shifted back to LNG as a fuel.
Bigger picture, the chatter today transcends the fuel itself, and Kalra says that in terms of decarbonization, “all the easy to stuff around energy efficiency is done. People worked with their wallets, with hull forms and mavis ducts and propellers and rudders and the like. Now they are starting to look at operational measures too.”
Enter connectivity and digital solutions … or for Alfa Laval: the StormGeo acquisition. “People are suddenly about keeping their hulls clean from fouling,” said Kalra. “I was speaking to one of the customers the other day and they said their charterers are sending underwater drones whenever the ship stops to check that the hull is clean … Who dreamt of this even two years ago?” And while clean hulls are the physical manifestation, the real end is information shared in real-time, globally, seamlessly, whether it’s in regards the shape of a hull or the load and run-time of an auxiliary engine.
“Now what we start to see in the charter party, we are having customers saying to the liner operators and the ones who manage it, ‘You need to make sure your ship is capable of sending high frequency data back.’
This, in turn, will put the onus on the full spectrum of OEMs to deliver high-frequency data for more immediate operational course corrections. “I think what we are seeing now is the next-generation of energy efficiency where operational behavior, operational practice start to change,” said Kalra. “We can see our StormGeo business, the digital business [playing a big and growing role],” helping people report in an efficient manner.
“Two years ago, if you supplied some equipment, we wanted to have our own field gateways, we wanted to have our own cloud,” said Kalra. “Imagine [that today]: 20 suppliers having their own cloud and their own field gateways: you would say, ‘forget about it’.” Today he sees the opportunity and action for OEMs to work together, to share data on alternate platforms, with all eyes on delivering a seamless solution to the owner/operators. “We should not be the one determining which platform is running. So we are a good dialogue with the MANs [for example] … They don’t compete with us. They have similar interests to see how can we make sure that in the end it should be the customer, what is best for the customer, not singularly best for yourself. So you need to be a bit more collaborative. You need to be a bit more partnership oriented and you’d need to have a bit more of an open arm rather than closed hands.”
