Selektope®-powered antifouling coating receives Nikkei Business Daily Awards for Excellence award

I-Tech AB’s largest customer, Chugoku Marine Paints, Ltd, has received prestigious recognition from the Nikkei Business Daily Awards for Excellence for their SEA PREMIER 3000 PLUS antifouling coating which is based on the barnacle-repelling active agent Selektope®.

SEA PREMIER 3000 PLUS was recognised by the Nikkei Business Daily Awards for Excellence, in the Superior Products and Services Award category.

The Nikkei is the largest financial newspaper in Japan. Now in their 38^th year, the Nikkei Business Daily Awards for Excellence independently applauds high-performing products and services, with award recipients announced in the newspaper in early January each year.

Introduced to the market by Chugoku Marine Paints (CMP) in April 2019, SEA PREMIER 3000 PLUS is the eighth antifouling product commercialised by the Japanese paint manufacturer to contain Selektope®. The advanced silyl polymer hydrolysis type antifouling coating was specifically engineered to meet intensifying fouling challenges facing coastal vessels in Japanese waters due to rising seawater temperatures. The coating product is particularly suitable for vessels operating with a low activity rate or at low speed. SEA PREMIER 3000 PLUS can also be used in niche areas such as sea chests and interior-grating-bow thruster tunnels.

I-Tech AB’s advanced antifouling active agent Selektope® plays an integral role in the coating’s hard fouling prevention, allowing SEA PREMIER 3000 PLUS to deliver superior static performance against hard fouling in addition to maintaining hull smoothness. Selektope® is an organic, non-metal active agent that works to prevent barnacle fouling by temporarily activating the swimming behaviour of barnacle cyprid larvae, repelling them from the hull surface. This unique antifouling active agent is characterised by its precision and efficiency at extremely low concentrations, and its non-fatal effect on the target organism.

Philip Chaabane, CEO I-Tech AB, commented: “Selektope® is an integral component in SEA PREMIER 3000 PLUS, an outstanding product that combines Japanese and Swedish innovation to deliver superior antifouling power for ship hulls and niche areas. We proudly welcome the recognition from the Nikkei Business Daily Awards for Excellence, an award that reflects CMP’s successful engineering work in integrating and taking strong advantage of our technology to achieve superior fouling prevention results.”

“Approaches to improve the performance and efficiency of vessels in the light of increasing environmental challenges come in many forms but preventing barnacle fouling in an intelligent way is something the industry needs to embrace.”