ROG.e 2026
As Brazil advances the development of its deepwater oil and gas resources, access to genuine spare parts for ageing and legacy assets is becoming increasingly critical. In an exclusive interview with T&B Petroleum, Bjorn Madsen, Chief Commercial Officer at Pelagus, who will attend ROG.e 2026, discusses how on-demand manufacturing can reduce lead times, support asset life extension, and improve supply-chain resilience. He also outlines the company’s plans to develop local manufacturing capabilities in Brazil and connect international OEMs with Brazilian operators and vessel managers.
T&B Petroleum/Dagmar Brasilio
In the interview, Madsen discusses Pelagus’s strategy for addressing the challenges associated with ageing and legacy assets, the role of digital inventories and technology-agnostic manufacturing, and the company’s plans to build local production capabilities in Brazil. He also explains how closer collaboration among OEMs, operators, vessel managers, and manufacturing partners can create a more resilient offshore supply chain.
Pelagus was designed to address the supply chain gap, or as we call it, the coverage gap, the widening distance between how fast the maritime and energy industries need spare parts and how reliably that need can be met. That gap shows up most for end-of-life parts, or parts that are slowly being phased out.
We initially started out looking at producing all types of OEM parts on demand. But we realized where we could really create the biggest benefit for OEMs was in supporting them where their current supply chain lacked capability: low-volume, sporadic-demand parts. That's the legacy portfolio, and it's where we've focused our model ever since.
On-demand manufacturing offers OEMs a chance to provide life extension as an additional service to retrofit and upgrade. That means they have a more cost-efficient and commercially viable option for producing older equipment parts, which they didn't have before. In doing so, this gives offshore asset owners more certainty around parts availability, knowing they have a readily available source for this older equipment.
Even the most capable OEMs can find that, once they commit to keeping older equipment supported, the parts themselves are no longer easy to produce quickly. Original casting patterns may have been retired years ago, or the drawings behind a legacy design may predate digital archiving. We've seen major OEMs make a genuine commitment to their customers, standing behind every brand and model they've taken on over time, and it's precisely in these cases that lead times can stretch out, sometimes to six to nine months. That's where we come in: we can bring that down to four to six weeks, often at a more competitive price than the OEM would face investing in new casting patterns or tooling from scratch.
Another common scenario is genuine obsolescence, where the original OEM is no longer in business and the part isn't available through any authorized channel. In these cases, we help bring in a new OEM to take on that legacy portfolio, so operators continue to get the full OEM experience, proper service, support and warranty, rather than losing access altogether. Pelagus doesn't step into that OEM role; we work alongside the new OEM and our manufacturing network to produce the part on their behalf.
On cost and lead time, it's important to have an apples-to-apples comparison. If we're comparing cost against a part currently in serial, high-volume production, we're not cost competitive, because our supply chain isn't designed for serial production, we're designed for low volume, which tends to be higher cost on a unit price basis. That said, our lead times are much quicker than any producer that has to make something to order from scratch, with nothing available in inventory. Where we are cost competitive is in cases like legacy parts, where there isn't a serial production opportunity and you'd otherwise have to start from scratch with new casting patterns. There, we're quite cost competitive against the realistic alternative.
On asset integrity, meaning quality, every supplier in our network goes through a structured qualification process before taking on any work: genuine maritime or energy manufacturing experience, ISO 9001 as a baseline, plus whatever additional standard the part calls for. New suppliers start on simpler, lower-risk parts and only progress to more complex or critical work as they build a track record, with our most capable suppliers working toward accreditation from classification bodies like DNV or ABS. For each project, we consolidate the OEM's requirements, the manufacturing process, the inspection and test plan, and the applicable standards into a single quality requirement document that the OEM reviews and approves before it goes to the supplier, so nothing gets lost in translation.
During production, each step has a defined checkpoint, and our quality team is the final check before a part is released, verified against that same document and backed by a certificate of conformance, with classification society sign-off coordinated as part of the same process where relevant. If a confirmed defect is ever traced back to a supplier's process, Pelagus takes direct accountability with the OEM, covering warranty and liability up to the value of the part for twelve months from delivery. And because we sell the part to the OEM, who sells it on to the asset owner, the OEM's own warranty and liability arrangements with their customer stay exactly as they are.
On supply-chain resilience, we give OEMs the opportunity to offer replacement, upgrades and retrofit, but now also life extension. That allows the OEM to provide greater resilience and greater options to their end user customers, improving overall supply chain resilience. In Brazil specifically, we're also developing local manufacturing capabilities, since lead times can be extended significantly there because of the challenge of getting parts into the country. We hope establishing local manufacturing capability will also help enhance overall resilience specifically for Brazil.
Every part that enters our network goes through a structured qualification process before it is produced for a customer, with certification requirements built in from the outset rather than tested for afterward. We work with the major classification societies in maritime, including ABS, DNV, and Lloyd's Register, and with the equivalent energy sector standards such as API, so compliance is part of how a part is qualified in the first place, not an added step.
Our manufacturing partners are vetted and hand-picked for each project, and their work is tracked through quality gate reviews during production and verified afterward through certificates of conformity and any relevant classification society sign-off. Every stage, from the digital file through supplier selection, manufacturing and inspection, is logged, giving full traceability from design intent to delivered part.
We see the value we can bring to oil and gas operators in Brazil through our OEM partners. That's where the value is. What we want to do is promote and bring forward the partners we're already working with in Europe and Asia, OEM partners who are using our solution, and connect them with local oil and gas operators in Brazil, so those operators have the option of on-demand manufacturing. That is one of the things we're hoping to initiate when we're at Rio Oil and Gas.
Absolutely. That's part of what Pelagus wants to do, with the local manufacturing capabilities we're building. We see this as a potential game changer for Brazilian operators: instead of ordering parts from OEMs in Europe and having them shipped in, they could buy those same OEM parts but have them manufactured in Brazil, through the manufacturing partners Pelagus has developed there.
Building up qualified, reliable suppliers doesn't happen overnight. So in the short to medium term, we'll be proposing a combination, relying on our manufacturing partners outside Brazil, including Europe and Asia, while our goal over time is to shift more and more of that manufacturing for Brazil to being made in Brazil.
We're technology agnostic, we choose the right tool for the right job. If additive manufacturing is the best method for producing a specific part for a specific business case, we'll choose that. But if other technologies like rapid casting or CNC machining make more sense for that project, that's what we'll go for. We look at every project holistically, from a manufacturing feasibility perspective, how we can achieve the technical requirements of the part, and from a business case perspective, lead time, target pricing, and so on, and select the appropriate technology based on that.
Additive manufacturing definitely plays a huge role in our ability to deliver parts with fast lead times and low volumes, the technology is designed for this kind of application. But that isn't to say traditional manufacturing doesn't have its place. Digital inventories are an enabler in the same way, an enabling part of our supply chain model that lets us deliver parts with consistency and repeatability, regardless of whether they're manufactured in Brazil or elsewhere.
For us, it's to reconnect with our sales partners in the region, Belga Marine, and support them in bringing in our more recent partners from Europe and introducing them to Brazilian operators and vessel managers. That's probably our biggest priority for this event. We have a strong group of OEM partners we've been working with over the last six months that we're keen to introduce to EPCIs and oil and gas operators in Brazil.
What we're hoping to do after those introductions is initiate what we call co-engagement projects, bringing together the operator, who is the ultimate initiator of demand and the one who needs and uses the parts, the OEM, who is the expert in manufacturing the part, and Pelagus with our manufacturing network, to produce the parts on the OEM's behalf. That completes the full value chain. We've initiated these kinds of projects in other parts of the world, including Europe and Asia, and we see this as a great model for Brazil as well.
For now, we're talking about the legacy portfolio. But we don't like to call it niche, because today so many, if not a majority, of assets in the maritime and energy industry are ageing and need access to legacy parts. It's a prevalent issue that we're focused on addressing. It is niche in the sense that, from an OEM's perspective, their legacy portfolio only represents a portion of what they sell to their broader customer base. But this is where Pelagus can really fill a capability gap and enable OEMs to take their service to the next level. That's our near-term focus.
Where we'd like to go afterwards is to expand into new portfolios, supporting OEMs in various ways, aligned to their specific priorities and strategies. What's important for us is to execute on our near and medium-term goals before claiming to be the most important supplier in an OEM's network. We're not there yet, but we aim to be a real strategic tool within their supply chain toolbox.
Contact us
2