Terra Drone Corporation, a provider of industrial drone solutions, recently completed its investment in RoNik Inspectioneering, a Dutch company that performs visual and ultrasonic inspections using wireless robotics.
With the investment, RoNik Inspectioneering now is Terra Inspectioneering, and part of the Terra Drone group, the company said. The newly named unit will focus on inspection of industrial, hazardous and enclosed spaces such as storage tanks, boilers, super heaters, furnaces, stacks and pipelines.
“Oil and gas companies are fast realizing how drones can be used to improve plant operation rates, save time and reduce costs,” said Toru Tokushige, CEO of Terra Drone. “By incorporating RoNik’s proven and reliable nondestructive testing technologies to the solution set we offer via Terra Drone’s global network of more than 25 countries, we will be able to cater to oil and gas companies in all parts of the world.”
RoNik comes with a long history of providing inspection services to oil and gas, petrochemical, and food and beverage companies in Europe. It has performed more than 200 inspections to date, Terra Drone said, and counts major oil and gas companies among its clients.
Earlier this year, RoNik won the Drone Hero Europe 2019 contest organized by the European UAV Knowledge Area (EUKA). Terra Drone claimed it’s known for investing in technology companies with differentiated unmanned solutions, and RoNik fits this bill.
RoNik carved a niche in the industry by developing propriety UT technology that makes ultrasonic thickness testing at hard-to-reach indoor places easy. The use of drones for tank inspections not only eliminates the need to put humans in dangerous places, it also reduces the time taken for inspection by 40% to 60%. The data captured by RoNik’s patented UT drones is shared in the form of cloud-based 3D models. These reports are fully compliant with storage tank industry inspection standards such as API-653 and EEMUA 159, Terra Drone said.