Talking Marine Vessel Coatings with Christer Øpstad, Jotun

Greg Trauthwein, Editor

Gregory R. Trauthwein has covered the global maritime market for more than 25...

February 21, 2025

Christer Øpstad, Global R&D Director Fouling Protection, Jotun. Image courtesy Jotun

Sourcing and maintaining marine coatings systems are arguably a shipowner’s most critical means to ensure a long and productive lifecycle for ships, boats and offshore rigs. At the same time, coatings have become a central part of the ship efficiency, decarbonization discussion. Christer Øpstad, Global R&D Director Fouling Protection, Jotun, discusses how these macro trends are driving R&D within his laboratories today.

To start us off, can you provide a ‘by the numbers’ look at Jotun today?

Jotun is headquartered in Sandefjord, Norway, still a family-owned company founded almost 100 years ago. We are a global company with operations in more than 100 countries across the world, with more than 11,000 employees worldwide and 40+ factories. R&D is a central part of our operations, and we have seven regional laboratories set across our key markets, including our main central R&D laboratory here in Norway. Jotun is present in four market segments, but if we drill down to shipping and the marine area, Jotun delivers a full range of products and solution, not only the hull performance coatings as the antifouling, but also a full set of corrosion protection, cargo hold solutions and onboard maintenance during the operational stage of the vessel.

“If we succeed in creating this greater awareness on the connection between the clean hull and decarbonization of fuel savings, I don’t think there will be a significant opposition between delivering innovative and effective solution and also meeting those budgets, operational, and environmental needs because they kind of all swing in the same way.”

Christer Øpstad, Global R&D Director Fouling Protection, Jotun

What is the ‘bread and butter’ of the Jotun hull coating lineup?

It’s broad, and that’s the nature of the industry. The shipping industry is diverse and dynamic, and there is not really any single product or technology that fulfills all needs. Our approach is technology neutral, where we leverage a range of technologies and products in our portfolio to be able to provide that performance for our customers’ needs; but having available a wide range of documented solutions where we can help the customer select the solutions that are optimized to their specific trades and vessels.

But if we have to distill it down to, let’s call it the bread and butter, I would say that what we focus the most on is our hull performance solution, where we leverage different parts of technologies, different products, helping the customers to do the application right, using also digital tools such as our HullKeeper platform to maximize the benefits of the coating. More and more we’re wrapping things around the effect that our coatings have rather than focusing it down on a specific technology because the end goal is the customer experience, not the coating in the can.
What digital tools do you offer to ship owners to gauge the effectiveness of their coatings?

Over the last 10-15 years there’s been a significant focus on performance: performance management, performance measurement, assessment and understanding so that they can monitor and optimize along the way. And then comes the digital shift, which has brought upon us new opportunities. We have established the HullKeeper system where we leverage algorithms that can help predict the risk of a vessel. We can have retrospective monitoring of performance to help the customers understand and monitor and gauge how well their vessels are performing and also help them evaluate whether they’re operating at peak performance.

COP29. Christer and Jessica Doyle (Global Sales Director Shipping) participated COP29in November 2024, and Christer was in a panel discussion related to how we better can protect biodiversity and shipping’s role into that. Image credit; Jotun

How are the digital + decarbonization trends, driving your day-to-day focus?

They are mega topics and they are the core of our focus. It’s not about the paint in the can, it’s the effect of the paint. For us, a clean hull really sits at the core of our focus and in the shipping industry, decarbonization, fuel efficiency, and also protecting biodiversity are all closely connected with this clean hull.

So our work in many ways is centered on developing technologies, products, and solutions that provide ships with the cleanest possible hulls to support the industry’s ambitions to decarbonize and save fuels. One of the things that we’re proud of is our flow cell, a tool that we have in the lab. This allows us to recreate the flow conditions on the hull of ships to measure and understand how different surfaces interact with water and generate drag, helping to quantify how different types of coatings, different types of surfaces influence the friction and the total resistance of that ship. We can use that together with CFD, for example, to be able to accurately predict the expected performance of various products and optimize them.

What’s the greatest challenge in creating coatings for maritime that meet budgets, operational and environmental needs?

That’s the biggest paradox, isn’t it? The major challenge that we’re faced with today is basically also that the industry as a whole is lacking uniformity in terms of regulatory requirements. And that goes both on the side of the coating composition, but also on the operating side in the biofouling management for the vessels in operation.

So the challenge here is that diverging and also oppositions in regulatory requirements across regions or countries, they cause delays in development because you have a redundant double, triple work even. Also, the introduction of optimized solutions are delayed, and different regulatory requirements makes it difficult to operate in equal terms across the world. It creates shifts and uncertainties for the whole industry, which makes the dynamic a little bit more complex and makes innovation slower.

Also, the shipping industry is faced with a lot of costly demands in terms of regulations and taxes on carbon emissions and a lot of things which put constraints on their budget, so the willingness to pay in a way also is constrained because they have to spend the money on more things. So raising then the relevance of investing in something which creates value for them is one of the things which is important for us, showing the worth and proving the value of what we deliver.

If we succeed in creating this greater awareness on the connection between the clean hull and decarbonization of fuel savings, I don’t think there will be a significant opposition between delivering innovative and effective solution and also meeting those budgets, operational, and environmental needs.

Research and Development is carried out globally in seven locations, and is the cornerstone of the Jotun offer to maritime and offshore.
Image courtesy Jotun/Gard Reian

There’s been a recent trend of robotic hull cleaning solutions. What are the pros and the cons?

New technologies and partnerships open [opportunities] for hybrid solutions where coatings are combined with the other technologies for enhancing the benefits for the customer. The HullSkating solution, as you point out, is one such example where we aim at providing the cleanest possible hulls even in the most challenging operations. But we’re well aware that we don’t operate in a vacuum, and things are happening at lightning speed when it comes to robotics.

To be frank, we welcome all who enter this market with the ambition to make the shipping industry cleaner, because what we know is that there is no silver bullet to solve all the challenges that biofouling represent for the industry operators, owners and stakeholders. They need to have access to as many options as possible to evaluate and test to understand which will give them the right benefits.

It basically comes down to key elements [and questions]: what do you really want it for, what is your key need? For example, is it cost? Availability? Documentation? What kind of assurance do you need? And then understanding also how [your needs] fit the different available solutions.
For example, if a vessel operates into countries which are very strict in terms of documentation, such as New Zealand or Australia, then there would be a much higher requirement for having proper documentation connected to that service. Which ports do you call and can you match it to a port-based solution versus an onboard solution? What level of crew involvement is needed? How does it influence your operational parameters?
We’re only seeing the beginning now of how the industry is taking it on, and what we’re seeing is an approach where offerings come, but a structured approach to the receiving end does not really yet come. So I’m very interested to see also how this will become more structured and regulated also with the ongoing work on the IMO side.