As a specialist developer, supplier and operator of crew transfer vessels, Tidal Transit has been a familiar and respected supply chain business across the global offshore wind sector for more than a decade.
With six boats on the water, the company, based near Norfolk’s Wells-next-the-Sea, has provided long-term charters to Sheringham Shoal and the decade-old Greater Gabbard, to name but a few.
As pace gathers and the sector swells, so has the need to be ahead of the curve – something commercial director Leo Hambro has no problem navigating, having recently announced the specifications for a market-leading zero emissions crew transfer vessel (CTV), likely to excite the minds of green-focused developers.
The reality is, the concept hasn’t been borne out of a current need for innovation, but rather a vision from Leo and his business partner Adam Wright that has been years in the melting pot.
“It has been a real labour of love. We have been investigating, experimenting and working through the process to get where we are for several years,” said Leo.
“It’s been extremely complicated, but we’re now comfortable saying we have come up with the right hull, the right battery supplies and right propulsion system with all the redundancies we can build into it. All the right specifications, which match what the client is looking for now, and in the future, and we can do it on electric motors.”
Using their industry expertise and knowledge of working both nearshore and offshore, the pair have developed the ZE Capable Real Hybrid CTV, which will feature quad propulsion for redundancy with power primarily raised from battery packs, along with gensets able to run on biofuel, or green methanol when supplies are available.
The vessels can carry 12-24 people and will provide 24-hour accommodation, along with more than 10 tonnes of cargo capacity to bring tools and parts out, or even hydrogen in tanks back from the windfarm.
With the industry crying out for long-term solutions, Tidal Transit is currently looking for investors and support with a model that Adam and Leo feel is justifiable to roll out across the wider market.
Tidal Transit began trading in 2011, after Leo met mariner and operations director Adam by chance. A fisherman since the age of 16, he was running a day charter fishing business – Norfolk Fishing Trips.
Leo, a self-confessed ‘techie’, grew up in Essex, but had holidayed since childhood in Brancaster, permanently relocating there in 2010.
His career began as a trainee sugar broker, providing food ingredients to sweets and drinks manufacturers across Europe, before he jumped ship to run a forestry business in Russia.
“My career had been skirting the edges of renewables since I was 20,” said Leo. “In the sugar business we also focused on bioethanol, whilst the forestry business was all about trying to get the best yield from the forest, therefore a focus on biomass. When I moved up to Norfolk to stop myself travelling so much, I was trying to find something that I could use some of my experience for.
“I met Adam by chance across the dining table of a retired banker in Brancaster, who Adam had gone to see about some advice for his fishing business in October 2010. We set up Tidal Transit in January 2011. “He wanted to buy a bigger and better boat for his fishing business. We then pondered, ‘What do those guys building things at sea need?’ Within weeks we had totally evolved the designs of the boats he had been fixed on.
“We thought that we would be carrying a lot of cargo and that we would have people living on the boats offshore. They were over-specified for their time, but suddenly everything got bigger.
“We originally ordered one boat, but we had a very good lunch in Spain and ended up walking away with two, with options for eight more.
“I remember we took our first 20-metre boat down to Seawork in Southampton and it was the largest boat in volume by a country mile. Two years later we took our fourth, and suddenly it was dwarfed by these monsters, which still only took 12 passengers, and we couldn’t really work out why they were so large. We didn’t see the benefit. It made absolutely no sense, especially to carry 2.5-tonne, mostly empty containers on deck.
“It made us focus more on trying to work out the most efficient way of taking what you needed to sea in the best way possible. The reality is we take 12 people and tool bags. We needed something more efficient and super comfortable.
“I’m a bit of a petrolhead, so I was driving a very fast Japanese car at the time, and suddenly someone said come to London and have a test drive in a Tesla Roadster. I drove it round Eaton Square and my brain was fried. I knew this was my future.
“I came back and said to Adam, ‘Why are we using so much diesel when our clients produce electricity? Surely this is something we should be focusing on?’.”
Two years later with the concept still on their minds, Adam and Leo attended the Electric and Hybrid Marine Propulsion Show in Amsterdam where they witnessed a company deliver the first class-approved batteries for a ship, which were big, expensive and did not suit their needs.
“This was 2017 and the real turning point was when we looked at the fuel usage of our fleet that year. We only had four boats, with some of the most efficient engines in the sector, and still we burnt 800 thousand litres of diesel between them. We knew we had to find a way out.”
The pair began to look at a retrofit option, utilising the space in the hulls of their boats for batteries and the replacement of the huge diesel engines with much smaller, but equally powerful electric motors. It’s a concept they still market today, concentrating predominantly on nearer shore projects.
The next hurdle was getting the electricity onto a boat, and in 2020 Leo and Adam began working with MJR Power and Automation to develop an offshore charger, after winning a funded project from the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition.
“The project was formally live from September 2021 to March 2022, but we had been building up to it a long time before then,” said Leo. “The charger was due to be installed at the Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farm in March, but due to supply chain issues we couldn’t install it, although it’s built and sitting in a shed ready to be installed offshore later this year.
“Suddenly we had this situation where it was all coming together. There is the ability to have an offshore charger and it can take power, pre-transmission loss, pre-substation loss, in some cases pre-meter, and therefore it’s as close to free as it can possibly be.
“MJR did a fantastic job of not just creating a charger but integrating it with a mooring system. We would basically hang off the turbine using the cable as a rope, while also charging at the same time. It's a superb innovation.
“I drive an electric car and having had this experience it has pushed this further forward in my mind to try and achieve a decarbonised fleet. The whole battery ownership, degradation and life of batteries has become really important to us in this whole process.
“We see the batteries as being in our boats for five to seven years, and during that time you might get a 10-15% degradation.
“We are looking to lease the batteries so that a second life can be utilised. They become the quayside batteries or the off-grid storage batteries of the future.
“We have been analysing wind farms across the UK and the continent, and there are some where we would use zero fuel and some where we could be working two weeks at sea with crews living onboard where we could reduce fuel consumption by over 80%.
“This is enormous, not only in terms of CO2, but also costs. At the same time the client walks away being more efficient, increasing the yield of their turbine as they are utilising the power directly from it. Even potentially using some of their curtailed power. It’s a win-win.”
Aside from securing contracts to build the new zero-emission vessel, Tidal Transit is working with French company Louis Dreyfus Armateurs on three hybrid vessels set for delivery this autumn and a partnership with Irish company Artemis Technologies, in Belfast, to build a high-speed electric foiling workboat.
“Eleven years in we’re still doing it, and hopefully in another 11 years we’ll still be here and with a big, green fleet consuming zero litres of dinosaur juice,” said Leo.
“Our partnership has been about complementary experiences and skills. My skill base is business, and I’ve learnt a lot about how you should and shouldn’t do it with the various businesses I’ve been involved with. Adam is a mariner, a fourth-generation fisherman, so if a boat is broken he knows how to fix it, he understands every element of it.
“Tidal Transit is a passion for me. I am constantly trying to make it better rather than to just make it work. There’s no way I could have done it without Adam and our long-serving team.
“I’ve always been a ‘techie’ – my friends used to laugh at me when I had a subscription at school to a gadget magazine. I love experiencing and seeing what can be delivered through new technology. I’m inspired by my clients going ahead and being so ambitious in this industry.
“The reality is that you can’t stand still, there’s so much news flow and the projections for offshore wind growth just get bigger by the day. Although not all of it might happen, if you haven’t got the ambitious goals, none of it will.
“We are pushing people’s thought boundaries,” he added. “If I’m going to have any legacy in this industry, it has to be focused on getting rid of diesel or being a part of it.
“If I can be responsible for a small amount of that change in delivering decarbonisation, then I would be delighted.”
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