Brittany Ferries partners with Wärtsilä
09/06/2022
Brittany Ferries’ latest roll-on/roll-off passenger (RoPax) vessel, the Salamanca, is to be provided with ongoing technical support via a ten-year service agreement with Wärtsilä, including digital predictive maintenance of its on-board systems.
The ferry made its first commercial sailing from Portsmouth, UK, to Bilbao in Spain on 27 March 2022. The Salamanca is the first liquefied natural gas-fuelled passenger ferry to operate from the UK and features multi-fuel Wärtsilä engines adapted to utilise a variety of ‘clean’ fuels, such as synthetic or bio-methane, as and when they become available. “We have a responsibility to operate as environmentally efficiently as possible and the choice of liquefied natural gas-fuelled propulsion is in line with this commitment,” said Arnaud Le Poulichet, Director of Engineering and Maintenance, Brittany Ferries. “The advanced technical support provided by Wärtsilä will optimise the ship’s operational performance, thus further raising its level of sustainability.”
The service agreement includes remote operational support and Wärtsilä’s Expert Insight digital predictive maintenance system, which combines artificial intelligence (AI) and diagnostics to identify anomalous equipment or system behaviour. These data analytics can be used to proactively identify and highlight potential failures to allow appropriate actions to be taken at an early stage, ensuring optimal uptime.
