London UK – March 16th 2022 - For five decades, Oceanology International (Oi) has been the event to view products, gain knowledge and exchange ideas in the ocean science and tech sector, and following a 4-year hiatus, the eagerly-anticipated event returned to London’s ExCel Centre yesterday.
Euan Murray and Samuel Stanton are Chief Commercial Officer and Sector Head, Marine and Energy respectively at first-time exhibitor NatureMetrics. The company has developed a clever and efficient eDNA sampling system that enables all marine organisms that have passed through an area of water in the last 24 hours to be identified and recorded quickly and easily by unskilled personel. “It’s proving to be a great show for us,” says Euan. “Because we’re such a new offering its important we can show, not tell potential customers how easy it is to use our test kits.” Samuel is just as positive about the Oi experience: “Just this morning we’ve had visitors to our stand from Canada, Germany, France, USA and Austria. A typical customer would be any offshore energy developer with a serious stake in its corporate social responsibility, and with interest from Orsted and RWE today, and BP booked in for a meeting tomorrow, we can’t fault the quality of visitors Oi is providing.”
Over at the Blueprint Labs stand we found Sales Manager James Spinks busy demonstrating the company’s innovative new Reach Bravo 7 manipulator to two potential clients from Italy’s Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn. Augusto Passarelli, one of the potential clients, who work for the government funded marine research institute was marvelling at how intuitive the operating system was for this effective tool. Augusto said “It’s only by actually picking up this water bottle off the desk here at Oi we can see how the technology of these manipulators has moved so far forward in a few short years.” The Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn needs the 450 metre arm to be rated at 600 metres for its purposes, but for James Spinks, that’s not necessarily a problem. James takes up the story: “This is what we’ve missed in the period of no shows for the last few years. That critical feedback from potential customers. I will go back to our tech guys and explain how we’ve got real interest for a 600 metre depth rated manipulator, how it will open up a significant new market for us. They may well develop this and we may well be back at Oi in two years with a shiny new 600 metre rated product.”