Introduction

Background

Acomarin is a family-owned company located in Southwest Finland.

Present activities

Today, the company is concentrating on marketing and selling JAK 400 couplers and developing a wide range of new ATB (Articulated Tug & Barge) coupling systems, covering the needs from the smallest tug and barge combinations to the biggest. The coupler design criteria have been to develop a light system that requires less space and is also competitive in terms of cost and delivery time.

The company has carried out a wide research and development project, from series of model tests to finite element strength optimizations and finally the completion of several ATB-coupler sizes. The model test series were made by VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland between June and December 2003. Their purpose was to find out what kind of forces the couplers would have to endure.

Future

The vision of Acomarin is to continue developing the Pushpin™ couplers for tug and barge operations as well as offshore applications, and to become even more competitive. The development of a new innovative application, the Double-Pushpin™, has already been started. The major idea of the Double-Pushpin™ is to enable loading / offloading while connected.