The Minister of Trade and Industry Torbjørn Røe Isaksen announced three new catapult centres at the Siva Conference in Trondheim Tuesday 5th of June. One of them was the Ocean Innovation Catapult (OIC) in Bergen. NCE Seafood Innovation Cluster, Bergen Technology Transfer Office and GCE Subsea has been instrumental in establishing the innovation center. OIC will be a national test, simulation and visualisation centre where world-class expertise and infrastructure is made available for seafood & ocean industries.

Ocean Innovation Norwegian Catapult Centre_Bergen_høy oppløsning[1] The Norwegian ocean industries represents about 37 per cent of the national value creation. OECD estimate the ocean industries to double its value creating within 2030. The Ocean Innovation Catapult’s (OIC) goal is to realise faster sustainable blue growth through efficient prototyping and verification of new solutions for the ocean industries.

– OIC will be an important infrastructure to strengthen the Cluster’s work on sustainable salmon farming. The RAS facility in ILAB will support the Cluster’s 55mNOK project “Kapasitetsløftet for Bærekraftig Sjømatproduksjon” providing test-facilities for students,  industry partners and researchers, says Tanja Hoel, Managing Director, The Seafood Innovation Cluster

New Infrastructure Planned

The OIC consortium have available test infrastructure for more than a billion NOK. SIVA announced about 40 million NOK in support to first phase of the OIC through the Norwegian Catapult programme. The total OIC budget is about 84 million NOK. This funding will be used for new joint infrastructure and competence development related to:

Additive manifacturing (3D printing) for both metals and composites
Recirculation Aquaculture Systems (RAS)
Digitalisation

The Cluster has launch the AquaCloud platform, a one of its kind dataplattform for driving innovation in the salmon farming industry. OIC will play an important role to accelerate the Cluster’s efforts on digitalisation and new digital business models for better and improve farming operations, says Björgólfur Hávarðsson, R & D Manager, The Seafood Innovation Cluster

National ambitions

OIC will help companies to move faster from the idea stage to the market. The target group is especially small and medium-sized businesses across the country, but also larger companies and research and development environments.

Strong Consortium

OIC is a strong consortium consisting of Bergen Teknologioverføring (BTO), GCE Subsea, NCE Seafood Innovation Cluster, Prototech, Stiftelsen Industrilaboratoriet (ILAB), Universitetet of Bergen (UiB), DNV GL og Marineholmen Forskningspark. OIC has establish collaboration with a wide range of national and international leading companies, research institutes and test centres.

-OIC is a perfect example of good collaboration between different actors on Marineholmen. I would especially like to thank our Cluster Partner GCE Subsea and BTO for their excellent efforts in the application process, and Hordaland fylkeskommune for supporting the process, Tanja Hoel continues.

OIC’s main location will be at Marineholmen Innovation district in Bergen, with collaboration and availability for the global ocean innovation community. 

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Contact:
Björgolfur Hàvardsson
bjorgolfur@seafoodinnovation.no
+47 92 21 27 27
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About Norwegian Catapult
Norwegian Katapult is a governmental owned competence infrastructure programme which aims to build and make available test, simulation and visualization centres for industrial based research and innovation projects. The program aims to move new ideas faster, cheaper and better from the concept stage to introduction to the market.
 
Read more about the programme at: https://norskkatapult.no/