Fjero A/S
Focused approach
First established in 1936, Fjero A/S was founded on the core concepts of the development, production and sales of solutions for the offshore industry.
Originally manufacturing a variety of products and equipment, over the years Fjero has become more specialised and in the last five years focused solely on the production of hydraulic cylinders. The majority of Fjero’s business is within the Nordic countries, focusing on the marine and offshore sectors and the wind industry, with major clients.
Over its long history Fjero has built up extensive expertise in all aspects of the manufacture of hydraulic cylinders from development and design to construction. This experience means the company is able to produce cylinders to meet customer requirements as opposed to offering purely standard products. Niels Storgaard Jensen, sales and development manager for Fjero, highlights the company’s key competencies: “I think our ability to produce customised solutions for our clients is a real strength of ours. We can change our hydraulic cylinders so that they fit the clients’ actual needs, which our customers appreciate. We are also able to produce cylinders when clients need them due to our fast delivery times.”
This customisation forms a large part of the business, as Niels explains: “I think that within the offshore and wind industries it’s impossible to go out and find a standard hydraulic cylinder due to huge range of applications and different requirements. Bearing this in mind we have just developed a new cylinder programme called F1, which is approved by the DNV. When a customer comes to us regarding a cylinder we use this programme as a starting point in discussions and adapt it as is needed, which may mean making it smaller, bigger, or longer. Then once we’ve made the changes we send the customer a drawing of the new cylinder. This system ensures that we engineer the right cylinders for the job every time.”
Fjero’s hydraulic cylinders are used in many different applications, projects and industries, due to their practical and functional nature. Within the offshore industry these include drilling platforms, rigs and blowout preventers (BOP). The cylinders often have to operate in challenging conditions, some even extreme, so Fjero works to manufacture products of the highest quality. “As well as our own strict standards, naturally we meet all international requirements and also those of the DNV, ABS, Lloyds and Bureau Veritas. We also follow our customers’ requirements as they often have their own cylinder specification so demand certain materials or flexibility or bearings, which we work to fulfil, “ says Niels.
The company operates an in-house development department to enable it to provide such high levels of customisation, as well as develop new product ranges. With hydraulic cylinders becoming more intelligent to deal with the increasing range of functions required of them, this is a vital area of the business. Niels elaborates on Fjero’s newest cylinder range to be developed for the market: “We’ve recently just finished designing our new F1 hydraulic cylinder series, which has been approved by the DNV. This means that the whole series has been approved on design, calculation and all the technical details and each one we produce will come with a DNV certificate. We also have a manufacturer survey agreement (MSA) in place with the DNV, which allows us to pressure test all the cylinders without having DNV personnel on site.
“I believe that the F1 series is going to be offshore markets. We have used all of our experience from the last 20 years within these markets in the development process, because we wanted to make hydraulic cylinders that incorporated as many of the requirements of the marine and offshore markets as possible. This is apparent in the design, the seals, and bearings as well as other areas, and we’ve made it very compact so it can be used in a number of different places.”
As is the case for many other companies, Fjero experienced more difficult conditions following the financial crisis, but with strong signs of market recovery the company sees a number of opportunities in the coming years. Bearing this upturn in mind, Niels focuses on Fjero’s vision for the future: “We want to see the company grow, which obviously will be quite large levels of growth for us. We want customers to know that we are a serious company which is going the right way and for them to know us for our quality, because we are delivering very high quality products for these kind of industries.”
Fjero A/S
Products: Hydraulic cylinders