Comprehensive Marine Solutions

Meritaito is a Finnish company with decades of experience in shallow-water hydrographic surveys, hydraulic engineering, waterway design, maintenance of waterways, oil spill response and manufacturing of aids to navigation. Meritaito’s personnel is used to working in challenging shoaly waters and even winter conditions.

Meritaito was founded in the beginning of 2010. The company headquarters are located in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, and additionally Meritaito has a nationwide network of smaller posts around the Finnish coast and inland lake area. State-owned Meritaito was formed from the former Finnish Maritime Administration (FMA). In 2010, Meritaito began with around 300 employees who continued the work of Finnish Maritime Administration in Finnish water areas. Today the market where Meritaito operates in is also open to private operators, so the company’s operational environment has changed considerably over the past three years.

Meritaito is the biggest Finnish marine survey service and waterway maintenance operator. Meritaito provides high-quality expert services and intelligent solutions that support the sustainable use of sea and inland water areas. Meritaito’s international SeaHow brand offers solutions for marine surveys, intelligent maritime environmental monitoring and oil spill response solutions. Today, 220 professionals work for Meritaito with a turnover of around EUR32 million (2012).

Marine Surveys

The majority of the operations of Meritaito’s marine survey service are based on the purchase orders of the Finnish Traffic Agency (FTA) for hydrographic surveys for nautical charting. Meritaito also supports offshore wind farm planning, pipeline laying and other marine construction projects with versatile site investigations including geotechnics in addition to smaller scale marine surveys for other private sector customers.

R&D work in marine surveys has recently focused on developing marine infrastructure inspection capability especially with Meritaito’s small survey launch. One of the main goals has been to develop effective ways to use high-resolution multi-beam surveys, mobile laser scanning and scanning sonar technology to gather comprehensive information of coastal infrastructure above and below the water surface. Good results in ports and with other coastal infrastructures have been gained to develop a concept and methods which would decrease the need for traditional and time-consuming diving operations in these kinds of inspections. Multi-beam surveys and mobile laser scanning provide us with a tool to obtain a comprehensive view of a location on a larger scale, and to recognise potential targets for further inspection. These specific targets can then be inspected more closely, for example, by professional divers, or alternatively by using scanning sonar technology, which offers the most accurate method to inspect underwater structures locally without the need to worry about visibility or strong currents.

Marine Monitoring Solutions

SeaHow marine monitoring products and solutions provide real-time and in-situ marine data to wherever it is needed. Combining wireless ICT and modern battery technology with remote sensors from Meritaito’s partners and a robust buoy platform manufactured by Meritaito creates smart solutions to support safety of navigation and collection of environmental data. Data can be repurposed and delivered either to a web interface or integrated to a customer’s systems.

New Generation of Oil Recovery

Meritaito has developed a new generation of SeaHow oil recovery products and solutions, which are based on several innovations bringing significant cost savings and improved recovery results when compared to traditional technology. The key targets of the planning process have been easy deployment and a continuous recovery process. With this product family a comprehensive range of vessels can
be equipped and various application environments can be covered.

Future Prospects

Opening of the Finnish market has of course changed much for the everyday operation of Meritaito, but the personnel has adapted very well. According to the CEO, Jari Partanen, Meritaito relies strongly on its professionals and the expertise gained over decades of working in this special northern environment. Meritaito provides high-quality expert services and intelligent solutions that support the sustainable use of sea and inland water areas and they aim to be one of the leading experts in the Baltic Sea region.