Lamor – four decades of protection for the Baltic Sea

Environmental solutions company Lamor has supplied its equipment to over a hundred vessels sailing in the Baltic Sea, typically operated by states or companies. In addition, Lamor has prepared contingency plans, trained oil spill responders, assisted in environmental incidents and created standards to ensure the compatibility of oil spill response technologies in different countries. "Our important mission is to clean the world, and we are proud to be able to develop the oil spill preparedness in the Baltic Sea region in such an extensive way," states Senior Adviser Rune Högström, who has been an integral part of Lamor’s oil spill response business since the late 1990s.

Lamor’s roots are in the innovation of the brush wheel in the 1980s when environmental consciousness was rising. The Porvoo-based Larsen family understood that there was a huge need for oil spill response equipment. Alongside technological development, they built a partner network, with the assistance of which it became possible to deal quickly and efficiently with even the vastest oil spills.

Technologies and competencies are developed for all conditions; arctic, tropical and everything in between for collecting both light and heavy oil from water everywhere: coastlines, offshore and archipelagos. In addition to brush wheel technology, oil booms, boat-towed oil collection systems, and oil spill response systems with backup power sources integrated on vessels are keeping the seas clean. Lamor also supplies multipurpose vessels designed for oil spill response.

Due to their use in dirty and challenging operating environments, the devices are designed to be as simple as possible. In an emergency they must work reliably as there is no time for repair or maintenance.

Being part of EMSA’s international support network

The European Maritime Safety Agency offers a range of services to help coastal states around Europe to respond quickly, effectively and efficiently to oil and chemical marine pollution incidents from ships and oil and gas installations. Lamor has been contracted by EMSA to run the Northern Baltic stockpile since 2019, having successfully won the call for tender twice. The stockpile is located in Porvoo, Finland, near Lamor’s installation and storage facility. In October, Lamor was also awarded a contract for the maintenance of another EMSA stockpile, and will start to operate the Northern Sea stockpile in Rotterdam in January.

Reaching further over the Baltic Sea

Lamor went international in its very early days. The company still operates in close connection with its partner ecosystem: in new countries, there is always a local partner familiar with the culture and local operating methods. Many of Lamor's best collaborations have lasted for decades.

Above and beyond the Baltic Sea, Lamor has a big role globally. "One of the first major operations was in connection with the Gulf War, when oil from bombed oil wells spilled into the sea. We collected several tank trucks of oil from the sea every hour. It is almost a whim of history that we are now cleaning up the soil in Kuwait that was polluted by oil during that same war," tells Rune Högström.

After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, Lamor's experts were called to help. The global partner network was alarmed, and Lamor was eventually responsible for up to 70 percent of all new oil response technology and the training of over one and a half thousand people. "Large global organizations were quite amazed by our capabilities. They couldn't understand how someone could succeed like this - let alone a relatively small company far away in Finland," concludes Högström. "We are still on the same mission to clean the world. However, in this millennium we have expanded our capabilities service portfolio to include also soil remediation, waste management, water treatment, and the chemical recycling of plastic."