Wärtsilä’s financial results for 2022 showed that although overall its order intake decreased by 24%, service orders increased by 6% and net sales increased by 11%, with the marine sector performing well.
Håkan Agnevall (pictured), President and CEO, said: “The year 2022 was characterised by geopolitical tensions and uncertainty in the global business environment.
“In the marine market, the market sentiment continued to improve throughout 2022. Ordering activity was supported by record-high orders for LNG carriers, especially in terms of order value. Increasing demand for tonnage, improved volumes in the passenger travel segment and continued fleet reactivations developed favourably. This also supported our service business. The active cruise fleet has been 94% at the end of 2022 compared to around 70% at the end of 2021. Decarbonisation continues to be an increasingly important topic for our customers. One proof point of our ability to support our customers’ environmental targets is the announced order for hybrid propulsion systems for four new heavy lift vessels. This innovative hybrid system will minimise the ships’ CO2 emissions, thus supporting the marine sector’s decarbonisation ambitions.
We were able to grow our order intake by 6% and net sales by 22% during the year. We were especially successful in the service business, where our order intake grew by 17% exceeding the equipment order intake in absolute terms. Service net sales grew by 12%, with growth in all businesses. Interest in long-term agreements has been high. Equipment net sales increased by 33%.
“In July, we announced our plan to centralise our 4-stroke engine manufacturing in Europe to Vaasa, Finland and to scale down manufacturing in Trieste, Italy. In October, we announced that we are further strengthening the marine end-to-end lifecycle offering by integrating the Voyage business into Marine Power as a business unit. By linking the unique digital expertise in Voyage with our well-established Performance Services, we are taking the next step in creating end-to-end digital solutions for maritime customers. The integrated organisation became effective as of January 1, 2023.
“We have continued to invest in R&D despite the prevailing market uncertainty. In June, we opened our new Sustainable Technology Hub in Vaasa, Finland. The technology centre enables agile development and efficient research of sustainable solutions for the marine and energy industries. We introduced the new Wärtsilä 25 medium-speed 4-stroke engine, designed to accelerate and support the maritime sector’s efforts in achieving decarbonised operations. It is the first Wärtsilä engine to run on ammonia as a fuel, but it is already capable of operating on diesel, LNG or on gas or liquid carbon-neutral biofuels.”
