Supporting a New Leading Force in European Energy
In January 2026, VARO Energy completed its acquisition of Preem, creating VAROPreem; one of Europe's most significant energy infrastructure companies.
With access to more than 120 terminals, six strategic manufacturing hubs and a rapidly growing renewable fuels business, VAROPreem plays a critical role in ensuring Europe's energy security while enabling the transition toward lower-carbon energy solutions. The company today stands as Europe's second-largest renewable fuel producer and one of the continent's most important energy supply networks.
As terminal operators across Europe prepare for new fuels, workforce changes, increasing regulatory requirements and growing pressure for operational efficiency, digital infrastructure is becoming as important as physical infrastructure itself.
This is where the Virtual Plant journey began.
Workforce Transition: Making Industrial Knowledge Accessible
One of the most significant challenges facing industrial infrastructure today is not technology. It is knowledge transfer. Across Europe, experienced operators and engineers are retiring while a new generation enters the workforce. At the same time, facilities are becoming increasingly complex. Modern terminal operations require people to understand assets, procedures, documentation and operational context faster than ever before.
Virtual Plant helps bridge this gap by combining:
- Physical reality
- Engineering documentation
- Asset information
- Operational knowledge
into a single visual environment. Instead of expecting operators to navigate multiple systems and interpret complex engineering documentation, information becomes intuitive, visual and accessible.
A Single Source of Truth Across the Terminal Network
As energy companies grow through acquisitions and portfolio expansion, standardization becomes increasingly important. Different sites often evolve independently over decades, resulting in varying documentation practices, asset structures and operational workflows. Virtual Plant provides a common digital environment where assets, documentation and infrastructure intelligence can be accessed consistently across multiple locations. The result is greater transparency, improved collaboration and a stronger foundation for future operational excellence initiatives.
Reducing Travel Through Remote Infrastructure Visibility
Terminal operations often require experts from central engineering, maintenance, safety and operational functions to travel frequently between sites. Many decisions traditionally required physical visits simply because reliable visual information was not available remotely. By creating a reality-based representation of facilities, Virtual Plant enables teams to:
- Review installations remotely
- Prepare interventions before arriving on site
- Validate information
- Support decision making from central functions
allowing travel to be reserved for activities where physical presence genuinely adds value.
Accelerating Management of Change (MoC)
Management of Change processes depend heavily on understanding existing site conditions. The ability to visualize assets, documentation and surrounding infrastructure within a single environment enables teams to evaluate modifications more effectively before work begins. This helps reduce uncertainty, improve preparation quality and create better alignment between engineering, operations and contractors.
Bringing Lockout Tagout into a Digital Environment
Safety-critical procedures such as Lockout Tagout benefit significantly from clear visualization. By connecting physical assets with operational information and engineering documentation, teams gain a clearer understanding of isolation points and affected systems. This improves communication between departments and contributes to safer execution of maintenance activities.
Creating the Foundation for Successful CMMS Programs
Many organizations invest heavily in CMMS platforms. However, the quality of maintenance outcomes ultimately depends on the quality of underlying asset information. Virtual Plant contributes by creating a validated digital asset environment where equipment information can be verified and structured before entering maintenance systems. The result is a stronger foundation for maintenance planning, asset management and future reliability initiatives.
Connecting Design and Reality
Industrial facilities continuously evolve. New installations, modifications and upgrades must be integrated into existing environments without disrupting operations. Virtual Plant combines reality capture data with engineering and design models, allowing teams to evaluate projects within the context of actual site conditions. This enables:
- Design reviews
- Construction planning
- Clash detection
- Spatial validation
- Improved stakeholder alignment.
