Lidan Marine AB

Lifting hopes

Ever since it was founded back in 1909, Lidan Marine AB has gained valuable experience creating winch and handling systems to meet its clients’ specific requirements.

Having specialised in providing solutions to the most demanding customers, the company is well placed to meet challenges and deliver solutions that can cope with fast and tough sea conditions, rapid temperature changes, high accessibility and rapid cycles. Lidan’s typical offering is characterised by low weight, compact solutions with high accuracy and reliability. Delivering such a reliable service in such tough conditions, Lidan has some very loyal customers, which continue to ask the company to support them in new challenges. Lidan’s consistent competence when it comes to challenging conditions has helped it to become one of the leading suppliers in the offshore and naval industry.

Having designed its first RoRo ramp handling system in the early 1970s, Lidan is the world’s largest supplier of handling equipment for heavy stern and side ramps on RoRo ships. It holds about 70 per cent market share for this equipment on deep-sea RoRo vessels, making it a leader in the field. The company also specialises in the provision of offshore winch and handling systems, having provided a range of winches since the late 1970s. Its heavy anchor and mooring systems are deployed around the world.

Today Lidan focuses on launch and recovery systems for ROVs. The company supplies electric and hydraulic winches as well as overhead cranes, fixed or travelling A-frame solutions and telescopic cranes, all including snubber with integrated latch. For the seismic industry the company also supplies submersible remote control and safety systems. Its design operation includes the capability to provide active heave compensation (AHC).

The company supplies tailored winch and handling systems. As one of the internationally leading suppliers of advanced naval handling equipment, the company provides lightweight shockproof multi-purpose handling equipment. Lidan lists some of the largest internationally leading naval equipment OEMs among its customers, such as Lockheed Martin, Thales Underwater Systems, General Dynamics and ThyssenKrupp.

A long history in its market segment, coupled with good staff retention, has provided Lidan with the experience in its operations to offer an unrivalled service to customers. Managing director, Lars Berglund elaborates: “Many of our employees have been with us for a long time. The head of the mechanical department, for example, has been with us for more than 20 years. We develop good customer relations, ensuring we always prove our capabilities and deliver their requirements, as well as ensure an around the clock global service access. The most important factors for us are quality and time, and we try to stick to what we know, focusing on the areas where we have the most experience. That means knowing that the technical solutions we provide are proven.”

One area where the business has lots of experience is engineering. With a hundred years of history in designing handling equipment for tough sea conditions, Lidan has numerous cases to fall back on from its current activities. The company employs a staff of engineers possessing a vast amount of in-depth experience in marine and naval applications. It also spends substantial amounts of time and money on training in order to keep its engineering staff at the forefront of technology developments. Lars describes the engineering operation further: “Development and innovation are very important to us. I would say we are definitely an engineering company with manufacturing capabilities. In fact, in terms of personnel and volume of work, our engineering department is actually bigger than our manufacturing operation.”

The business also supplies hydraulic and electric solutions depending on the application. With a professional understanding based on its long experience of the industry, Lidan knows which benefits are to be found in each choice of technology and can support its customers in their product development. In the business’ history it has observed the evolution of low-pressure hydraulics to the wider range of applications made possible by the introduction of high-pressure hydraulics. Having mastered hydraulic technology in extreme conditions, Lidan offers its customers equipment that can deal with the harshest of working environments. Lidan was also involved in the early stages of frequency-controlled electric motors, and the organisation has become a close development partner to suppliers of control equipment and electric motors in the process of improving the equipment used in naval and marine applications.

Looking to the future, Lars describes the plans for Lidan Marine’s progression in the coming years: “Currently we don’t have a lot of business in North America, so we’re trying to expand our operation in this region. We will also use that as a platform to move into the Brazil market, which mostly consists of deepwater activities. As a business I would say Lidan will strengthen its position in its established segments but I want us to be able to handle a wider range of systems, so we’re investing heavily in this and employing new technologies.”

Lidan Marine AB
Products: Naval and marine handling systems, winches and cranes