How Harvest Tech is plugging critical gaps in offshore operations. Pic: Getty Images
- Harvest Tech has been proven in real case studies
- It cuts costs, risk and downtime in offshore operations
- The same tech is now being used in defence
If you want to see how offshore work is changing, look at a vessel sitting 200 kilometres out to sea, with barely enough bandwidth to load an email.
This is tough, risky work, and it’s getting harder to staff properly. The old model of flying experts in and out is starting to crack.
That’s the world Harvest Technology Group (ASX:HTG) operates in.
Based in Perth, the ASX-listed company builds secure live-streaming and data-transmission technology that works in places where the internet is weak or barely there at all.
Its core idea is simple: if you can’t move people easily, move the expertise instead.
Harvest’s technology pushes high-quality video, audio and data through ultra-low bandwidth satellite connections using its proprietary Nodestream platform and products like Wearwolf, AVR2 and NQE encoders.
It works across different assets and networks, which is why the same technology is used in offshore energy, maritime compliance and defence.
The case studies below show how that plays out in real operations.
The ship that didn’t need its experts onboard
During COVID, a subsea engineering services provider hit a hard problem.
A vessel in Southeast Asia needed specialist equipment commissioned, but its technical experts were stuck in Australia.
Normally, they would fly out and live on the vessel for the duration of the job. Pandemic travel restrictions made that impossible.
The vessel also had limited satellite bandwidth. Normal video calls were useless. Diverting the ship to port would have blown out timelines and costs.
Harvest’s solution put its Wearwolf headset on a crew member onboard the vessel, and installed NSM decoders in the experts’ home offices in Australia.
Using ultra-low bandwidth streaming, the crew and experts could see what each other were seeing and talk in real time.
Video quality was adjusted live to match available bandwidth, in some cases dropping below 100kbps.
The result was remote commissioning of specialised subsea tooling without flying anyone offshore.
Fewer people were exposed to offshore risk, costs fell, and carbon emissions dropped because flights and port transfers were no longer needed.
In practical terms, Harvest turned a stranded project into a functioning operation without moving a single expert closer to the work.
How a ship stayed seaworthy
In April 2020, Lloyd’s Register needed to conduct an annual class survey of the offshore vessel “VOS Shine” in Adelaide.
Normally, this requires surveyors physically onboard for days. COVID restrictions meant the senior surveyor in Perth couldn’t travel.
Without the survey, the vessel would be deemed unseaworthy.
Harvest proposed a remote survey trial, with the vessel manager wearing a Wearwolf headset, a local surveyor in Adelaide supervising physically, and a senior surveyor in Perth watching via an NSM decoder and giving instructions in real time.
The livestream was also distributed securely via Harvest’s AVRLive platform.
The technology worked across different lighting conditions and bandwidth constraints.
The senior surveyor could guide the wearer to specific equipment, assess condition and confirm functionality.
This showed regulatory inspections don’t always need to happen face-to-face to be credible.
In practice, a vessel that should have been sidelined kept operating.
Giving shore teams eyes on the ocean
As fleets grow, keeping track of what’s happening on each vessel becomes harder.
Vallianz Holdings operates offshore vessels across Asia, the Middle East and the Gulf of Mexico. It wanted real-time situational awareness from its operations centre in Singapore.
Harvest installed its NQE 4-channel encoder on the “Vallianz Prestige” to stream CCTV feeds back to Vallianz’s V-Hub.
They were decoded using NQD units and viewed securely via AVRLive. This gave Vallianz continuous visibility of operations and better troubleshooting.
Decisions that once relied on radio calls and reports now happen with live visual context.
Listening to the seafloor
One of Australia’s largest oil and gas producers faced another slow-moving problem.
Subsea assets were inspected using vessels and remotely operated vehicles. Each visit cost more than $125,000 per day and depended on weather windows.
Data often arrived weeks or months later, meaning decisions were based on history rather than reality.
Harvest built a smart buoy system that transmitted live sensor data acoustically from the seafloor to a surface buoy. From there, the data was sent back to shore using ultra-low bandwidth transmission.
The system was self-powered and could alert teams if readings changed significantly.
Instead of waiting for vessels and crews, engineers could see real-time trends and respond immediately.
Inspection costs dropped by more than 50%, and the customer cut its carbon footprint by up to 90% by reducing offshore mobilisation.
Where defence fits in
The same problems exist in defence, just with higher stakes.
Assets are remote, connections are weak, and decisions still need to be made in real time.
That’s why Harvest’s low-bandwidth, encrypted video and data streaming has moved into defence and national security use cases.
The technology is being deployed in contested and low-connectivity environments, including maritime surveillance and unmanned systems.
Now read: Harvest Tech advances defence and maritime operations in December quarter
Overall though, Harvest’s numbers are still modest and its transformation is ongoing.
But its technology sits in a structural shift where operations and inspections are moving away from physical presence toward remote situational awareness.
This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decision.
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Harvest Technology is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.
