Over the coming days, Maritime UK will be profiling each of the finalists in this year’s Maritime UK Awards. Winners will be announced on 12 November in an event live streamed from Plymouth.
The 2050 Award is sponsored by the Department for Transport, and is an award given to any business or organisation taking steps to capitalise on the opportunities presented within the Government’s Maritime 2050 Strategy. Maritime 2050 was the first long-term strategy developed for the UK maritime sector and was created in close partnership between government and industry.
Maritime Minister Robert Courts said:
“The 2020 Maritime UK Awards will be an important opportunity for the maritime sector to come together to celebrate its achievements, as well as its significant contribution to the UK’s Covid-19 response. I am delighted that this year’s event includes the DfTs Clean Maritime Awards, highlighting how our world-leading sector is helping achieve our net-zero and emissions reduction targets.”
The winner of the Maritime 2050 Award will be announced at an event live-streamed and broadcast from Plymouth, Britain’s ocean City on Thursday 12 November from 5pm.
Highly respected experts from a variety of businesses and government departments were involved in the judging panel for this year’s Maritime UK Awards, which celebrate the achievements of the UK’s maritime sector, which adds £46.1bn to the UK economy every year, and supports 1.1 million jobs.
Shortlisted finalists for the 2050 Award are entries from Peel Ports, Royal HaskoningDHV and Artemis Technologies.
Peel Ports Group is one of the UK’s largest port groups, headquartered in Liverpool. Peel Ports have invested £2.7m in new technologies and processes to streamline their vessel traffic service and have launched an environmental strategy for the group. In addition to investments in innovation, the company has worked to increase the resilience of their ports in Liverpool, Heysham and London Medway to account for additional cargo and changing supply chains following the UK’s exit from the European Union. Peel Ports are facilitating new trade opportunities on a number of fronts, including transatlantic trade and new services to the Mediterranean, Canada, the Baltics and Rotterdam as part of this work.
Royal HaskoningDHV is an international engineering and project management consultancy working with ports and terminals across the UK. Their Smart Ports Health check is a digital maturity assessment designed specifically for the ports industry with a scoring framework that helps ports extract opportunities for new technologies in line with Maritime 2050 ambitions. Royal HaskoningDHV will deliver the long-term plans to align with Maritime 2050 for Portsmouth International Ports, the company is a partner in the 2050 Maritime Innovation Hub and the Mersey Maritime Innovation Forum.
Artemis Technologies was founded in 2017 with a mission to see how technology from the America’s Cup could play a part in the decarbonisation of the maritime sector. The company also plays a leading role in the Belfast Maritime Consortium. Artemis Technologies were recently awarded a £33million innovation grant from government to develop zero-emission ferries in Belfast. The project is estimated to prevent 77million m3 of CO2 emisisons by 2026.The project aims to help the UK reach a number of its net zero objectives and realise ambitions set out in the Clean Maritime Plan coming out of the Maritime 2050 Strategy.
Harry Theochari, Chair of Maritime UK, said:
“We’re delighted to announce the finalists for the Maritime UK Awards 2020. Across all fourteen categories we can see some genuinely world-beating products, services, and operators. The quality of entries this year is testament to the strength and commitment of our maritime sector to be world-class despite the most challenging of circumstances.”
Ben Murray, Director of Maritime UK, said:
“We were determined that these awards would go ahead, and in an ideal world would have been one of the first occasions at which colleagues from across the sector could come back together following COVID-19. With that not being possible due to new restrictions, we think it’s really important to celebrate the remarkable work that has been going on – in responding to COVID-19, and in spite of it – which sends a message of resilience and ambition.”
The 2020 Maritime UK Awards are hosted by Maritime UK South West and delivered by Plymouth City Council. Diamond Sponsors are the MLA College and the University of Plymouth.
Tickets to the live-streamed event are free and open to everyone. To register visit the official website.