Electric container feeder

Yara Birkeland, owned by fertilizer company Yara is currently being fitted with KONGSBERG technology and is designed to reduce NOx and CO2 emissions and improve road safety by substituting for up to 40,000 truck journeys per year in populated urban areas.

Svein Tore Holsether, president and CEO of Yara, said: “Every day, more than 100 diesel truck journeys are needed to transport products from Yara’s Porsgrunn plant to ports in Brevik and Larvik where we ship products to customers around the world. With this new autonomous battery-driven container vessel we move transport from road to sea and thereby reduce noise and dust emissions, improve the safety of local roads, and reduce NOx and CO2 emissions.”

KONGSBERG will develop the sensors and integration required for remote and autonomous operations on Yara Birkeland, in addition to the electric drive, battery and propulsion control systems.

Birkeland will initially operate as a manned vessel, moving to remote Yara operation in 2019 and is expected to be fully autonomous from 2020.

The feeder, named after Yara’s founder, scientist Kristian Birkeland, will ship products from Yara’s Porsgrunn production plant to Brevik and Larvik in Norway.

“By moving container transport from land to sea, Yara Birkeland is the start of a major contribution to fulfilling national and international environmental impact goals. The new concept is also a giant step forward towards increased seaborne transportation in general,” said Geir Håøy, president and CEO of KONGSBERG.