TBA Group wins emulation tender of PSA Antwerp’s Europa Terminal

In September 2022, TBA Group was awarded the tender from PSA Antwerp (PSAA) to provide emulation to semi-automate the yard of the Europa Terminal in the port of Antwerp.

The Belgian PSA Antwerp, the second flagship within the PSA Group headquartered in Singapore, processed around 11 million TEUs in 2021. The current straddle carrier operation at Europa Terminal will change to an operation with automated stacking cranes (ASC).

PSAA is looking for solutions that enable the emulation of operational plans in a virtual environment to achieve the smoothest transition from manual to automated operations. TBA’s proven and class-leading emulation tool (also known as “digital twin”), CONTROLS, will support the automation trajectory of PSA’s Europa terminal.

TBA has been involved in the preliminary investigation of the vision of PSAA to validate and provide recommendations for the most suitable way forward for their automation aims. To keep the operational impact as limited as possible, the project will be performed in three major phases.

This initiative of PSAA contributes to their wider goals that they’ve set their selves to achieve by looking for new and innovative ways to decarbonisation and reduce their ecological footprint by 2030.

Roland Arkema - PSA Project Manager QA: “TBA has proven expertise in the area of emulation. We are confident that TBA CONTROLS is the right product to support Europa Terminal’s emulation objectives.”

Dr. Yvo Saanen - Commercial Director TBA Group: “Emulation is a proven approach to test new software well before it goes in production under near-to-live circumstances. As such problems can be avoided and remediated before go-live, reducing the cost of fixing afterwards, and the associated risk profile of the project.“