
Offshore digital tech firm Kinewell Energy has its sights on further expansion into the Asia-Pacific following backing from Innovate UK.
The Tyneside-based creator of software that helps offshore wind farm developers lay out turbines and connecting cabling has translated its suite of systems into Japanese and Korean - both expanding markets in which the firm hopes to do more business.
Kinewell has already enjoyed some initial success in the Asia-Pacific market, having last year launched the Kinewell Wake-Optimisation Turbine Arrangement solution - an AI-powered software for calculating the best position of offshore wind turbines - at the Global Offshore Wind Summit in Fukuoka in Japan. In South Korea, the firm has supported the early development of the 600MW Wando-Guemil offshore wind project in the Yellow Sea, helping Blue Wind Engineering to find the best location for the offshore substation and optimise the project's inter-array cable layout.
This week, some of the firm's North Shields-based team have travelled to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea to meet clients and drum up further business. They will attend the APAC Wind Energy Summit in Incheon, South Korea.
Founder and CEO Dr Andrew Jenkins said: “We’ve already worked with six companies in Japan and three in South Korea to deploy our SaaS optimisation tools and provide consultancy services. One of our Japanese clients has also recently renewed its subscription to continue using our KLOC inter-array cable layout optimisation solution, and the demand for our services in the market is continuing to grow.
"This is why we decided to translate our software solutions into Japanese and Korean, to make it easier for clients to use our tools through their native language, and we’re thankful to Innovate UK for helping make it possible to do so. We see strong demand and growth across the whole of the Asia-Pacific region for our offshore wind design optimisation tools and the funding and support from Innovate UK will really help us to grasp the lucrative opportunities this increased demand will present.”
Government support for Kinewell has come via Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), through its Net Zero Living: User focused design competition. It allowed Kinewell to make its software solutions as easy to use as possible through user-focused design principles and work with the Design Council, as well as funding for the language translation.