The MANTA ready to level up
Manta Project
14 June 2022
The numbers are impressive. 45,000 hours of research and development since 2018. 60 engineers, technicians and researchers involved. 5 research laboratories committed. More than 20 companies concerned, specializing in naval architecture, hydrodynamics, energy management and production, eco-design, guidance systems, etc. And all this for what result? To write the technical specifications for the MANTA.
Behind this rather dry name lies the essential guidebook to the MANTA: 150 pages of detailed description, with more than 50 plans in the appendix detailing the ship’s systems, equipment and layout. Between the OS like map and the complete requirements, the MANTA specifications will enable our future technical partners to determine with perfect accuracy the needs they will have to meet in building the MANTA.
Frédéric SILVERT is the managing director of MANTA INNOVATION, the integrated design and engineering office of The SeaCleaners. He led the development of the specifications, with the help of naval architect LMG-MARIN. He explains:
The MANTA’s ambition is to provide an ‘all-in-one’ response to the scourge of plastic pollution, by being able to fulfil a variety of missions: to collect and recover floating plastic waste, to be a scientific research vessel, to serve as an educational vehicle and to be a platform for demonstrating technologies for clean and green ships and for marine waste management. All this, with a minimal environmental footprint!
The challenges in designing this extraordinary vessel were immense. Today, these challenges have been met and the MANTA is ready to be built. We are extremely proud of the result of this work and would like to sincerely thank all the partners who contributed to the development of the technical specifications.
This is an important step that we are taking together. For each of the MANTA INNOVATION employees, it is the culmination of several years’ work and the dawn of a new stage: the one that announces the beginning of discussions with the shipyards, and soon, we hope, the launch of the construction of the MANTA, at the end of the consultation process that we can now open.
–Frédéric SILVERT, Managing director, MANTA INNOVATION
The next leap forward will be the placement of an order with a shipyard for the construction of MANTA.
Based on the specifications, and still with the support of LMG-MARIN, The SeaCleaners is preparing to launch a Call for Tenders, in order to identify shipyards with commercial and financial references in this type of innovative project. The specifications, because they provide all the necessary concrete elements, will be the indispensable working basis for the shipyards to establish a commercial offer and a costing as precise as possible.
In parallel with this consultation work, The SeaCleaners teams will also meet with equipment suppliers, shipbuilding industrialists and material manufacturers wishing to contribute to the construction of the MANTA, through financial sponsorship, sponsorship of skills or sponsorship in kind.
This will be the case at the EUROMARITIME exhibition in Marseille (from 28 to 30 June 2022), a key Euro-Mediterranean meeting place for professionals in the maritime and inland waterway blue growth sector, which has established itself as the meeting point for a promising sector that is resolutely committed to the ecological transition, the reduction of pollution and the preservation of oceans and rivers.
