A brief presentation of the commercial potentials of the objective

In the 1970s, Sweden was one of the world's leading shipbuilding nations: today, no large ships are built in the country. Nevertheless, there is still a substantial shipbuilding industry, with new builds of small and medium-sized vessels and subcontracted parts of large vessels.  

The project involves four different concept studies for specific types of vessels that are commercially interesting to Swedish industry, as follows:

A wholly composite warship:

The small warships that have been developed by FMV have shown themselves to be commercial successes, with large numbers built for the Swedish navy and coastguard service, as well as exports to several countries.  About 100 such warships have been manufactured, and so the commercial potential for export of an improved warship is therefore good.

Aluminium hull with composite superstructure for a high-speed ferry:

In the 1990s, Stena pioneered the introduction of several high-speed ferries, built wholly of aluminium. Today, the company is world leader in terms of experience and operation of large high-speed ferries, so that it is well positioned to define improvements in design. The introduction of composites into superstructure construction can further improve the ferries' performance, with good potential for the export of vessels and design services. 

Steel hull with composite or aluminium superstructure for a Ro-Ro vessel:

Ro-Ro vessels and container ships are the dominant form of intermodal transport today. Ro-Ro traffic can be divided into traffic with load carriers (trucks, trailers and semi-trailers) and transport of (newly-manufactured) vehicles and also passengers (Ro-Pax). Coastal Ro-Ro traffic is exposed to considerable competition from road and rail in terms of quality, transport time and cost. It is difficult for ship transport to compete in terms of transport times, and so it tends to compete on the basis of the combination of load capacity and transport time. Reducing the superstructure weight of Ro-Ro vessels increases their cargo capacity, reduces the need for ballast and reduces fuel costs, which in turn improve competitiveness. In addition, and by no means least, a lightweight superstructure is expected to reduce maintenance costs.