Dutch offshore anchoring SME developing wave energy and desalination systems for island decarbonisation.
Vryhof Anchors BV is a Dutch SME based in Schiedam — the heart of the Netherlands' offshore industry — specializing in anchoring and mooring systems for marine applications. Their involvement in H2020 wave energy projects reflects a deliberate strategic move to apply offshore anchoring expertise to the emerging wave energy sector, where securing floating converters to the seabed is a core engineering challenge. By 2019 they had progressed to coordinating their own project (W2EW), combining wave energy harvesting with seawater desalination to provide fully renewable electricity and clean water to remote islands. This positions them as a practical, hardware-oriented contributor at the intersection of offshore engineering and island energy independence.
Participation in both Wavepiston (2015, force-cancellation wave converter) and W2EW (2019, coordinator) points to mooring and anchoring as the core technical contribution across all wave energy work.
Both H2020 projects target wave energy specifically — Wavepiston focused on low-cost conversion through force cancellation, W2EW on full-potential harvesting for electricity generation.
W2EW explicitly targets decarbonising islands by pairing wave power with desalination, broadening the application beyond pure energy technology.
W2EW's stated objective combines sustainable electricity with desalination, adding water security as a second output of their wave energy system.
In their first H2020 engagement (2015), Vryhof participated as a component supplier or technical partner in Wavepiston — a project focused on reducing the cost of wave energy through force cancellation — with no keywords logged, suggesting a supporting rather than defining role. By 2019 they had stepped up to coordinator on W2EW, and all documented keywords now cluster tightly around wave energy, island decarbonisation, and desalination, showing a shift from specialist contributor to project leader with a defined application focus. The trajectory is clear: from offshore hardware supplier feeding into someone else's energy project, toward an autonomous integrator building complete renewable solutions for energy- and water-stressed island communities.
Vryhof is moving toward becoming a systems integrator for island-scale renewable energy, combining their anchoring hardware with wave energy and desalination — future collaborations would likely fit projects targeting remote coastal communities, small island states, or off-grid energy independence.
Vryhof has operated in both follower and leader roles within a short H2020 track record, starting as a participant and graduating to coordinator by their second project. Their consortia are small — 4 unique partners across 3 countries — suggesting they prefer lean, focused partnerships over large multi-actor programs. This points to a hands-on, engineering-driven collaboration style where they expect to own a defined technical workpackage rather than play an advisory or administrative role.
Vryhof's H2020 network is compact: 4 unique partners across 3 countries, consistent with the SME Instrument model where consortia are intentionally small. Their geographic reach spans at least the North Sea / Atlantic European corridor, which aligns with the wave energy resource map.
Vryhof Anchors is one of very few industrial SMEs bringing proven offshore anchoring hardware expertise directly into wave energy R&D — most wave energy consortia struggle to bridge the gap between academic converter design and real-world seabed deployment. Their Schiedam base places them inside the world's largest offshore supply chain, giving them supplier relationships and testing infrastructure that university partners cannot offer. For a consortium developing a wave energy device that needs to survive open-ocean conditions, Vryhof provides the credibility that the system can actually be installed and maintained.
