Elire Infra has introduced intelligent floating infrastructure to accelerate net zero goals across multiple industries. These “Smart Hubs” are modular, multi-purpose and scalable infrastructure solutions, designed to accelerate decarbonisation across ports, harbours, waterways, and the industries they support.
Unlike traditional floating infrastructure commonly known as pontoons, Elire Infra’s Smart Hubs are agile and designed to be flexible and customisable They are aimed at multiple target audiences including ports, harbours, city waterway authorities, municipalities, cruise lines, wind farm developers, energy companies, military and government bodies, for a range of uses including offshore wind, energy bunkering, shipping, cargo, freight, logistics, power supply, maritime refuelling, land reclamation, Advanced Air Mobility, passenger terminals, disaster relief and rebuild.
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Transitioning with new technologies
Floating infrastructure isn’t a new concept, the market for floating platforms is growing rapidly, and was valued at USD 10.8 billion in 2023. It is expected to reach USD 18.5 billion by 2030. However, traditional platforms often serve a singular function whereas the Smart Hubs offer a multi-functional solution designed to evolve with industry demands.
To meet global sustainability targets set for 2050, the expansion of ports and harbours with traditional infrastructure is not only expensive, but time-consuming and comes with a significant environmental impact. This means cities and ports need affordable, future-proof infrastructure solutions that can transition with new technologies and are quick to deploy, with minimal disruption to business continuity and the environment.
Hexagonal, modular and scalable
Aligned with eight UN Sustainability Goals, the Smart Hubs offer cost-effective and sustainable long-term solutions with a lifespan of over thirty years, simultaneously enhancing the local economy, connecting communities and preserving local habitats.
These modular, scalable hubs are hexagonal in form, made up of a central technical “nucleus” and six outer platforms. The hexagonal form brings increased strength and connections, allowing scalability and flexibility; many hexagons can be added together, or taken apart, which means that ports and harbours are not left with an unused asset that is no longer generating revenue while continuing to carry maintenance liabilities.
With the solution, environmental disturbances are kept at a minimum, with any temporary damage restored upon removal compared to the permanent habitat destruction associated with traditional port expansion.
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Future fuel options
The Smart Hubs can be a base for various potential future fuel options for the marine industry and are engineered to support the integration of clean energy and electrification of the mobility sector to accelerate decarbonisation and net zero goals.
The central nucleus integrates the components that drive today’s technology and allows for the adoption of the existing technologies in other floating structures by imbuing them with intelligence to ensure longevity, versatility, and compatibility with diverse services and requirements.
The Smart Hubs are technology agnostic so they can adapt to current technology and new technologies as they emerge. The hubs are pre-certified and ready to install, allowing for the integration of specific industry application components, and technical integrations for partners to test the environments.
The modular system is also designed for speed and flexibility, producing different size hubs ranging from 400 m2 to 1600 m2 that can be constructed from the same components.
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Tailored to specific cases and locations
Luke Jenkinson, Founder & Group CEO Elire Group: ‘The innovative engineering behind our Smart Hubs, combined with the versatility of a unique multi-modal hexagon design, allows for endless configurations tailored to specific cases and locations; ranging from large coastal wind farm assembly setups to smaller last-mile midstream river cargo configurations to reduce CO2 emissions.’
‘We conducted a study in partnership with an independent decarbonisation consulting company based in Norway, MH Tech, and discovered that a network of SmartHubs in ten small regions across the Mediterranean including Malta, a location known for its congested roads, could save the equivalent of 10 million tonnes of CO2 over a ten year period, in addition to taking off thirty per cent of HGV vehicles off the roads by enabling logistics via electric waterborne transport,’ he adds.
Shipped in containers
Built for containerisation, the connectable transport-friendly platforms can be shipped and moved to the site using containers, and are easily manufactured at local fabrication yards or dry docks; making the journey from off to on-site cost effective and fast.
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Digital twin
The engineering and design team at Elire use digital twin and simulation for the purposes of planning and configuration and for predictive maintenance, and the floating Smart Hub infrastructure remains in place regardless of tides, surges and sea level change, building resilience for ports and cities.
Elire Infra aims to have 200 Smart Hubs supplied across multiple industries around the world by 2030.
Picture and video by Elire Infra.
