Wavefoil, Eitzen and an EIC Accelerator Bow Foil Left in Parts

Ships have carried experimental wings on their bows for more than a century, because a foil moving up and down in waves produces lift with a forward component. The catch is that fixed foils add drag in calm water and can be torn off in a storm. Wavefoil AS, a Trondheim start-up registered in 2016, built a foil module that slides up into the hull when it is not wanted. In the Green Deal round of the EIC Accelerator pilot in May 2020, the European Commission selected Wavefoil for a grant-only award, and it signed the grant agreement for SmartWings, a €3,014,417.50 project with an EU contribution of €2,110,092.25, according to CORDIS. Wavefoil was the only company named for the project.

The goal was to scale the foils up for ships of 100 to 200 metres. On 26 June 2023, after the company's own petition, the Møre og Romsdal District Court opened bankruptcy proceedings against Wavefoil AS, according to the Brønnøysund Register Centre; the trade weekly TU reported the bankruptcy two days later. The project's final report says the components of the full-scale prototype "were manufactured, but never assembled".

A Closed Company and a Living Product

The legal entity that received the EU grant no longer exists. The trustee, lawyer Anne N. Hovde, closed the estate with a dividend of 1.2341% to unsecured creditors, and Wavefoil AS was struck off the Register of Business Enterprises on 25 November 2024, according to the register's closing notice and deletion notice. North Data also lists the company as terminated.

The product survived. In October 2023 TU reported that the bankrupt Wavefoil had new owners, tagging the story with Eitzen Rederi, and said in a photo caption that of the three founders only Erlend Vastveit continued in the new company. The register shows Wavefoil Technologies AS, founded on 24 July 2023 at the Oslo address of Camillo Eitzen & Co, with Fridtjof Camillo Eitzen as chair of the board. The Wavefoil website, now run by that company, says it has been part of the Eitzen Group since 2023. The terms of the purchase from the estate are not public.

The successor is still selling. In February 2026 it announced a second WF3970 foil module, with a wingspan of more than eight metres, for a new wellboat that the salmon farmer Rostein is having built at Larsnes Mek. Verksted, a sister vessel to Ro Spirit, according to maritimt.com. Baird Maritime confirmed in November 2023 that Ro Spirit had been delivered with a retractable foil nearly eight metres wide fitted by Wavefoil Technologies.

The Technology: Turning Waves Into Thrust

A ship heading into waves can face up to 100% more resistance than in calm water, the SmartWings objective on CORDIS says, which costs speed and fuel and causes the pitching and rolling that makes crews seasick. Foils on the bow generate lift as the bow rises and falls, and part of that lift points forward. Wavefoil's contribution was the retraction: composite foils on a vertical guide that pull into a compact module inside the bow, so that they can be stowed in calm water, where they only add drag, and in heavy weather, where slamming loads can break them, according to the CORDIS report.

The size of the saving is where the numbers move. The 2020 CORDIS objective promised a 5% to 20% cut in propulsion energy; the final report and the company's website give 5% to 15% in waves. On the first ship, the 45-metre Faroese ferry Teistin, then chief executive Eirik Bøckmann estimated a 10% fuel saving when it began sailing with the foils on 25 September 2019, according to The Maritime Executive. The CORDIS report puts the first-year average at "approximately 10%", while Bente Storhaug Dahl, as chief executive, told The Motorship that 11% had been measured on Teistin. On Ro Spirit, a four-hour test in September 2024, switching the foils in and out every 10 minutes, showed a 10.4% reduction in propulsion power at the same speed, according to a savings analysis written by Wavefoil's own engineers. No independent measurement of either ship could be found.

What SmartWings Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

SmartWings ran from 1 September 2020 and was due to end on 31 December 2023. Its objective was a foil module for vessels of 100 to 200 metres, a much larger unit than the ones fitted to ferries, built and then tested at full scale on a ship. In August 2021 Wavefoil signed I P Huse, a yard dating back to 1903, to produce its largest products, starting with "Wavefoil's first foil module, type WF5910", designed for ships of 100 to 200 metres, and said the EIC Accelerator supported the work, according to maritimt.com and Ship & Bunker.

The final report is unusually frank. "The original ship owner withdrew from the project for reasons outside our control," it says, and Wavefoil "was not able to carry on the operation of the company long enough to find a test vessel before the company went bankrupt in June 2023." CORDIS records that the project was terminated on 13 December 2023. The report claims that the design reached its fuel-saving target in a comparison, that a decision support system telling crews when to retract the foils was verified in simulations, and that the foils had "the largest composite thickness ever produced", which could not be checked against any other source.

1. Design a foil module for 100 to 200 m shipsPartly deliveredDesign optimised and components made, per the CORDIS report.
2. Build and test a full-scale prototype on a shipNot deliveredParts "never assembled"; the test ship owner withdrew.
3. Decision support for retracting the foilsSimulation onlyVerified "with acceptable results in simulations", never at sea.
4. Fuel-saving design targetReported metThe company's own comparison, not independently tested.
5. Market launch, €75M profits and 26 jobs by 2027Not deliveredNo large-ship module sold; the company went bankrupt in 2023.

No sale or installation of a module for ships of 100 to 200 metres has been announced by Wavefoil, its successor or a shipowner since. The vessels known to carry Wavefoil modules are ferries, wellboats, ambulance boats and a fast passenger craft.

What Wavefoil Achieved Before and Around the Award

The smaller foils did reach paying customers. After Teistin, the company fitted foils to ambulance vessels and passenger ferries; The Motorship counted six systems delivered, including three ambulance vessels, with three fishing vessels on the way. A Mediterranean high-speed craft, Krilo Lux, was retrofitted, and its captain said it could hold its normal 28 knots in waves of about 1.5 metres, according to Seawork in February 2023. The current reference list names ten vessels, including Teistin, Ro Spirit, Liafjord, Thea Jensen, Rosesol, Roseflora, Krilo Lux, AQS Siv and Bard.

The money came mainly from shareholders and public grants. The register shows share capital raised in January 2021 and again in November 2021, to NOK 80,213, according to the Brønnøysund Register Centre. In the filed annual accounts, paid-in equity rose from NOK 14.24 million at the end of 2020 to NOK 32.25 million at the end of 2021, so about NOK 18 million of new equity came in during 2021. The investors are not named in any public source found. Sales revenue was NOK 1.13 million in both 2020 and 2021, against net losses of NOK 2.75 million and NOK 2.09 million.

The Money and the Collapse

At the end of 2021 Wavefoil AS had NOK 23.38 million in the bank and equity of NOK 24.81 million, against NOK 12.41 million of short-term liabilities. What happened in the next 18 months cannot be read from the accounts: the register's list of notices shows no approved accounts for 2022. In March 2023 three board members stepped down, leaving Sven Jørund Kolstø as chair and founder Eirik Bøckmann as the only other member, according to the register. The company petitioned for its own bankruptcy three months later. How much of the EU grant was paid before termination, and whether any was recovered, is not public.

The successor's own accounts are small. Wavefoil Technologies AS reported sales of NOK 719,769 in its first part-year to December 2023, negative sales of NOK 7,441 in 2024 and NOK 496,704 in 2025, with net losses each year and equity of minus NOK 2.47 million at the end of 2025, according to its filed accounts. The new Rostein module had not yet appeared in those figures.

Why Europe Should Care

Maritime transport accounts for 3% to 4% of the EU's carbon dioxide emissions, and since January 2024 the EU Emissions Trading System has covered ships of 5,000 gross tonnage and above that call at EU ports, according to the European Commission. FuelEU Maritime, fully applied from 1 January 2025, requires the same ships to cut the greenhouse gas intensity of their energy by 2% from 2025 and 80% by 2050, and leaves the choice of technology to operators, according to the Commission's transport department. A device that harvests wave energy for propulsion fits that technology-neutral approach.

The mismatch is size. SmartWings was meant to bring the foils to ships of 100 to 200 metres, closer to the fleets those rules cover. The two reference vessels whose length is public, Teistin at 45 metres and Ro Spirit at 79.3 metres, are well short of that, and the large module was never assembled.

The Verdict

Wavefoil Technologies, the former managers of Wavefoil AS and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, trade press and EU project data, linked throughout.