"It's the same thinking, applied to different systems."
Andreas Svanlund (48) has joined Kitemill as Head of Sales, leading sales across defence and energy. He holds a master's degree in strategy and business development, is a trained physiotherapist, and spent many years as an officer in the Norwegian Armed Forces. He comes to Kitemill from senior commercial roles at Oskar Pedersen AS and SafeClean AS.
Officer, physiotherapist, business strategist: to Andreas, it is one discipline in different settings. "Leadership, physiotherapy and business strategy are all about seeing how different things work efficiently together, and improving performance where it lacks," he says.
At Oskar Pedersen in Kristiansand, he spotted such a gap in the Norwegian police's procurement. The police had built their frame agreements around scale, buying larger volumes to attract more bidders and cut costs. But more and more officers were buying equipment outside the agreements.
"To me, that was a signal," Andreas says. "The actual need of the organisation was not volume, but variety."
He proposed a new type of contract where the police bought a service rather than a product, leaving it to the supplier to deliver whatever officers needed. "The police really fell in love with it," he says. Within a short time, the small Kristiansand company was supplying more to the Norwegian police than the police's own joint services agency.
Oskar Pedersen supplied Gore-Tex rainwear to the Swedish Armed Forces, and Gore came to Kristiansand to present its textiles. When the salesman skipped a couple of pages, Andreas asked him to go back.
The fabric was flame retardant and made for Formula One seats. Andreas asked whether the drivers sweat a lot, and whether anyone had ever made a uniform from it. Nobody had.
That is where the police contract paid off. "I could pick up the phone and call the counter-terrorism unit, which I knew was looking for a new uniform, and ask if they were willing to try something entirely new," he says. The result became a counter-terrorism uniform, which later won the Nordic Combat Uniform contract, worth EUR 425 million.
As Chief Commercial Officer of SafeClean, Andreas secured framework agreements with Aker BP, Equinor and Schlumberger. His explanation is simple: "The key is to have a product that solves a concrete problem they have."
SafeClean's chemistry dissolves the hard scale that builds up inside oil and gas processing systems. The traditional method sends people inside for high-pressure cleaning, exposing them to mercury and benzene. With SafeClean, cleaning an entire oil train went from three weeks to 24 hours.
"I've always liked to follow projects and ideas that I believe can make a real change in the world," Andreas says.
He sees a huge demand for new electricity over the next two decades, driven by AI, data centres, reindustrialisation and electrification. "There is no other technology that can be scaled as quickly as Kitemill," he says.
At the same time, institutions and infrastructure must adapt to a new global security situation. Here, Kitemill can use the technology built for energy to give increased situational awareness through Kitewall, and in time combine it with energy production. "By betting on Kitewall's growth, you are also investing in a cleaner future."
Andreas' first priority is to understand what customers actually need. "It's dangerous to present a finished solution if you have not first identified that it bridges a gap the customer needs, wants and requires," he says.
His method: find the customer's most critical problem, how important it is to fix and their willingness to pay, and know the alternatives. "Then we can tailor our solution in a way that cannot easily be replaced."
Andreas lives in Kristiansand with his wife and their four children, two boys and two girls. A former wrestler who also did a lot of boxing, he now starts every morning by going out to the chickens, followed by running or weightlifting. His wife, he adds, is happy that he is taking up travelling again.
Andreas was asked to sum up why he joined Kitemill, his answer is short: "To make a change in the world."
