SmartFluidPower’s participation in SMM 2026, the leading international trade fair for the maritime industry in Hamburg, has recently come to a close. The opportunity was made possible by SAI Hydraulic Motors, who hosted us for the entire duration of the event at their stand, Hall A4 | Booth 413.

Our sincere thanks go to SAI: for the shared space, for the introduction to a network of contacts we would not have reached on our own, and for making possible an exchange that proved far richer than expected.

Maritime is not, for SmartFluidPower, a core sector: our experience has been built mainly in industrial and mobile applications. Four days at the fair were enough, however, to confirm how pervasive hydraulic technology is even in naval applications. Propulsion systems, winches, deck cranes, steering mechanisms: hydraulic components are present in most onboard applications, often with significant room for optimization still untapped.

Conversations with naval engineers, designers and shipyard technical managers highlighted the sector’s distinctive constraints — weight, space, reliability under extreme conditions, dedicated regulations — and a recurring question: is it possible to simulate the behavior of these systems before they are physically built? This is exactly the kind of question our daily work is built around.

At the stand, together with SAI, we presented the meeting point between hydraulic components and simulation software: on one side, hydraulic motors engineered for marine operating conditions; on the other, the ability to model and predict their behavior across every scenario. A combination we believe reflects how technology and simulation can work together to develop more efficient solutions, even in new contexts.

We return from Hamburg with new contacts, concrete ideas to work on, and confirmation that it was worth exploring a sector that, until now, was marginal to us — but where hydraulics, and simulation with it, plays a far from secondary role.

Thank you again to the entire SAI Hydraulic Motors team for the hospitality and for a collaboration we hope to repeat.