You spent over a decade in the Merchant Navy – tell us a little about your life at sea.
I joined Shell Tankers fresh out of school as an engineering cadet. It was a great life, being at sea. Until you’ve been out of sight of land for two weeks at a time, you just don’t realise how big the world is, how much ocean there is out there.
You also get a chance to observe some spectacular sights, like the green flash. When the sky is perfectly clear, as the sun sets, all the different colours in the spectrum of light start to disappear over the horizon, and green is always the last one. Just as it disappears, the whole sky goes bright green and back to blue again, before darkness falls.
I also vividly remember the stars at night. At midnight, after finishing a late shift in the engine room, we’d come out, make a cuppa, and sit out on the deck in the middle of the ocean, in pitch black. Nobody that lives on land can ever see that number of stars, because of the lights from the cities. It is just awe inspiring. And obviously you see a lot of the world – I think the only continent I haven’t visited is Antarctica. That’s on the bucket list.
What have been the highlights of your career at Belzona?
I remember my first application offshore, on a deaerator in the North Sea, which was also the first application we did in the oil and gas industry. The process vessel was 17m high and 6.5m in diameter, and we coated the whole thing, top to bottom. As far as I know, the rig was in service for more than 12 years. It had a few patch repairs because of mechanical damage, but the coating itself was intact. I put that down to the way we held the blasted surface.
We wrapped the entire vessel in electric blankets, heated the skin up to 25°C and held it there. Even in the harsh climate above the Arctic Circle, we were able to hold the blast to ensure a good application. This platform has now been decommissioned, but a replica is installed in the Aberdeen Maritime Museum, preserving Belzona’s offshore legacy.
What are the emerging industries that Belzona is involved in?
A lot of things are happening in the renewable energy sector, with wind and wave power. There are two major wave generator manufacturers that we are working with to specify Belzona to protect their machines, and for some bonding applications. Another opportunity is in the protection of the leading edge on the blades of wind turbines. We’ve had meetings with the three major wind turbine manufacturers in Scandinavia.
What do you think will happen in the next 10 years in the corrosion and maintenance sectors?
If you look at the cost of corrosion worldwide, generally speaking, in any industrial country, it is approximately 4% of their gross national product. As far as Belzona is concerned, we haven’t scratched the surface yet, we’ve just stroked it gently. I think we need to develop specific niche market products.
Health and safety legislation is starting to frown upon welding in the maintenance sector. Shutting the whole plant down for hot work repairs is also not economically viable and our kind of industry – repairs that are cold – will have the opportunity to advance faster than ever before.
If you look back in history, ships, tanks, bridges, everything used to be riveted together. Then we moved from rivets to welding. Industry is now moving away from welding to cold bonding. In certain industries, for maintenance, I see cold bonding taking over from hot welding.
