Malaysian FPSO Giant Yinson Invests in Norwegian Autonomous Vessel Start-up

February 24, 2023

©Yinson/Zeabuz (cropped)

Yinson GreenTech (YTG), a green tech investment branch of the Malaysian FPSO giant Yinson, has announced its strategic investment in a Norwegian startup specializing in autonomous solutions for the maritime industry called Zeabuz.

"The investment provides the foundation for YGT to work closely with Zeabuz in the development of autonomous solutions for YGT’s future fleet of electric vesselsm," Yinson said, without sharing info on the size of the investment.

Eirik Barclay, Chief Executive Officer of YGT, said, “We recognise the enormous potential of autonomous vessels and see Zeabuz as being well placed to become a leader in this segment."

" Following this investment, we look forward to collaborating closely with Zeabuz to bring highly innovative autonomous vessel solutions to the Singapore market.”

YGT plans to incorporate Zeabuz's solutions in its electric vessels and utilize these technologies to boost the safety and efficiency levels of the vessels while reducing the manning required during passenger and cargo transportation.

Zeabuz Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder Erik Dyrkoren commented, “We are pleased with YGT onboarding as a partner with Zeabuz to realise waterborne mobility of the future. Our technology enables our customers to offer safer and more efficient operations while enabling entirely new mobility concepts such as urban waterborne mobility with reduced crew.”

Zeabuz was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's progressive research centre for autonomous marine operations and systems. The company has developed a proprietary autonomy platform that "is scalable, certifiable, and suitable for both new designs and retrofit of existing vessels."

Their business model is to provide autonomy-as-a-service to operators of smaller vessels.

As for YTG, in 2020, Yinson established it as its Green Technologies Division, focused on investing in new technologies and business areas that enable the global transition to a low-carbon environment, through investments in the marine, mobility, and energy segments.