Paul van Gelder: lifting industry has important role in renewables

Paul van Gelder, CEO of Mammoet, will use his keynote speech at the CATME conference to highlight the key role for the lifting and specialised transport sector in renewable energy and to call for “much faster” construction.

Paul van Gelder, Mammoet CEO, gives the keynote speech at CATME in Dubai on 23 March.

Van Gelder, who speaks on 23 March in Dubai at Cranes and Transport Middle East (CATME), said improving the way that renewable energy facilities are built will be vitally important to meet global climate change targets.

“Put simply, we will need to build a lot faster than we currently can to achieve these goals, and the engineered heavy lifting industry will play a large part in achieving this”, he said.

“Our industry will need to innovate as well to help achieve this acceleration, and this will only be possible once we see double-digit ROCEs [return on capital employed].”

Van Gelder said good energy will not come cheap; “I will compare and contrast the approach taken in the oil and gas industry to that currently taken in renewables, and how a new approach could help to drive standards upwards for OEMs, developers, contractors and sub-contractors alike.”

He said CATME would represent an excellent opportunity to stimulate debate on the best way to achieve these targets; “and on the real-world measures that need to be put in place to make them happen. I look forward to interesting conversations with customers, partners and suppliers.”

To register for the event, visit the conference website here.

Other speakers at the conference include Philippe Verdeure (Sarens), Dr Xavier Amils (Industrias Murtra Cadenas), Mustafa Al Abdulmohsin (Saudi Aramco), Mohammed Sadiq Sheriff (Gulf Test Safety Consultancies), Burhan Kuris (Hareket MENA), Peter Hird (The Crosby Group – BlokCam).

The conference is organised by KHL Group and International Cranes and Specialized Transport, with supporting associations SC&RA and ESTA.

The event sponsors are:

• Gold: Jaso Tower Cranes
• Networking breaks sponsor: Hitachi
• Lunch sponsor: WDI Wire Rope - Python
• Silver sponsor: NFT
• Support Plus+ sponsor: Tadano
• Supporting sponsors: Casar, Enerpac, Liebherr, Modulift