Astican will provide services to unmanned ships thanks to its partnership with Rolls-Royce

According to Canary Ports, the CEO of the Canary Shipyards (Astican), who owns the Santander Shipyards (Astang), Germán Suárez Calvo, has expressed his conviction that in 25 years there will be ships passing through the islands that will not be manned. An aspect in which the company's association with Rolls-Royce will allow you to go in the front line in an innovative and competitive direction."In 10 years' time there will be a Rolls-Royce test ship of up to 100 containers in the sea without crew and, within 25 years, we will begin to see them in the ports," said Suárez Clavo, who pointed out that artificial intelligence will be key. "All this exists", said the director of Astican, who considered, at a business meeting of Deloitte and Association for Progress of the Directorate (APD Canarias) and from which ABC has echo, that digital transformation in the harbour area will be key. He explained that unmanned and remote-controlled transport systems will become a common feature of human life and in the port area will offer unprecedented flexibility and operational efficiency.

He recalled that the VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland is working on the prototype and that this does not mean the elimination of human beings because unmanned vessels need to be monitored and controlled. "This will require completely new types of work functions, tasks, tools and environments," he said. The manager added that one of the challenges of the port business is to attend "that there will be many changes." In the short term, he said that the maritime sector should make progress in eliminating polluting emissions."In 2020 it will be prohibited to sail by issuing sulphur particles"He emphasized. He stressed the need for canarian ports to have LNG infrastructure to provide cruise ships, including energy services.

He stressed that "the cruises are the most evolved ones going with ships powered with gas". You will "moles" that 8,000 tourists without counting crew and cargo. "A mole of those have needs of 25,000 kilowatts per day and one of the solutions will be that they connect to the electrical network. We in Santander have 1,500 kilowatts of power". For this reason, he wondered what will happen in a city like Las Palmas with four cruises logged at the same time and requiring 100,000 kilowatts per day.