Lion Marine Group

With a successful history dating back to 1966, Lion Marine Group has an enviable pedigree within the highly competitive maritime sector. Today, thanks to its flexibility and its close-knit teams, the company continues to build on its reputation for delivering guaranteed high-quality products and bespoke services to customers across Europe. Owner Cor de Kwant chatted with Richard Hagan about how the company’s technologies give it an edge in the industry.

Lion Marine Group’s history dates back to 1966, Sweden when Helmut Willem Carlsen established HW Carlsen in Malmö. By 1970, Mr Carlsen had engineered and delivered its first ship-to-silo unloader,

a self-discharging cement carrier, and dry bulk storage solutions using fluidisation fabric. This led to several export projects and turned the small company into an international success.

In the following decades, HW Carlsen went on to firmly establish itself as a specialist in dry bulk handling. It later delivered the first modern ship-to-silo unloader with a manipulator arm, as well as various other cutting-edge solutions.

Pouncing on the market

HW Carlsen’s success attracted the attention of international investors, resulting in its sale to a series of new owners during the early 2000s. Between 2010 and 2020, several mergers - that included HW Carlsen – resulted in the formation of the Lion Bulk handling organisation and its incorporation underneath the new Lion Marine Group umbrella, alongside Lion Technology and Lion Engineering.

Today, Lion Marine Group is an engineering project management company a nd a premium provider of bespoke solutions for portside, terminal and offshore challenges. Naturally, given its history, the group specialises in designing, manufacturing and commissioning a variety of loading and unloading solutions for dry bulk materials, alongside providing related engineering and technical equipment.

The revolutionary unloader

The company’s engineering skills were put on full display with the recent delivery of a pioneering new project to an Italian customer. The project - a dock-mobile shipto-silo unloader - involved the installation of what is essentially a massive vacuum pump on the back of a large dock-going

LION MARINE GROUP I PROFILE

cargo truck. The truck then simply backs up to the ship, the machinery is connected on one end to the silo and then on the other end, the manipulator arm with the vacuum pipe is moved into place in the cargo. The whole machine then effectively vacuums up the cargo, depositing it into the silo.

“The unloader is able to transfer 200 tonnes per hour,” explained Owner Cor de Kwant. “It’s an interesting project that was completely designed and built in-house. And thanks to full Industry 4.0 integration, the machinery can be operated fully remotely via secure dial-in. This dial-in facility is especially important because it

allows us to be more efficient in terms of quickly resolving any problems or questions the client might have with the machine.

“In the past, we would’ve had to physically travel to the unloader if there was a problem, so this remote access means that we have been able to dramatically improve our service level simply by improving the way we do business.”

Lion Marine’s engineering expertise plays an important role in building credibility and trust with its customers. Every project delivered by the company is accompanied by a performance guarantee based on expert calculations. It ensures that every piece of

machinery manufactured by Lion Marine is able to fully deliver on the customer’s specifications and expectations.

“The bulk handling industry is a very specific industry with very niche knowledge: it’s not easy to break into,” said Mr de Kwant. “Customers are spending millions at a time on loading and unloading

equipment and it’s important that they can be guaranteed that the equipment will work as promised. For that reason, we supply a performance guarantee with every solution we offer. If we say that this unloader will perform at 200 tonnes per hour, then that’s a fact and it’s what it will do on delivery.”

Taking on technical challenges

In 2020, Lion Marine achieved a major milestone when it established Lion Technology. This new arm was created when the company identified a gap in the technical handling industry, according to Mr de Kwant: “We had seen how many organisations were struggling to buy technical equipment due simply to the overwhelming number of suppliers and products on the market. We realised that there was an opportunity for a credible company with a lot of technical knowledge to begin selling the products in a more thoughtful, more thorough, better supported manner.”

Lion Technology brought together the company’s best technical knowledge with a huge, hand-selected range of the industry’s best quality products. The result is a brand new, revolutionary e-commerce

website that was launched in late February 2023. The site launched with a catalogue of 500 unique products, but the catalogue was expected to grow to 50,000 unique products within just a few months after launch.

“We want to assist our customers with technical challenges,” said Mr de Kwant. “We don’t simply upload a product. We pay careful attention to the technical specifications of the item, and we make sure that those same detailed technical specifications are available to view below each product on the site. This is a major emphasis for us, because it’s what separates us from the competition.

“You can go on to other major e-commerce sites and buy, for example, a butterfly valve, but you’ll pay more, and you likely won’t find the correct technical information. Whereas if you want to buy from us, but you have

a technical question, you can just call us and receive expert technical service. It’s all about moving our business to the next level of service delivery.”

In the meantime, Lion Marine looks forward to a busy 2023 with a pipeline of projects on the way and further, ongoing improvements to its web shop; all of it designed to make their customer’s work easier. Concluding, Mr de Kwant confirmed. “Ultimately, we provide peace of mind to our customers by providing high-quality, transparent service and a great quality product.” n