Aberdeen-based subsea equipment supplier SubSea Supplies has announced a strategic partnership with Anekonnect Incorporated, bringing a purpose-built digital diagramming platform for subsea cable assemblies and electrical circuit schemas into its mainstream offering. The move, announced as SubSea Supplies celebrates its 25th anniversary year, signals that cable assembly design in the underwater industry is entering the same digital engineering workflow that terrestrial industries adopted years ago.

What Anekonnect Brings to the Table

At the core of the partnership is Anekonnect's Electrical Design Application (EDA) — a web-based diagramming tool built specifically for the underwater industry. Its distinguishing feature is a comprehensive component database of 12,000+ subsea connectors together with an extensive catalog of cables and accessories, allowing engineers to sketch a complete ROV electrical circuit or cable assembly using real, orderable components rather than generic schematic symbols.

The platform was developed with direct input from the people who actually build and use these systems: survey engineers, ROV builders and operators, cable moulders, equipment rental companies, and connector manufacturers. According to the company, the EDA accelerates three stages of the cable lifecycle — design, procurement, and moulding — while reducing errors and improving communication between engineering and workshop teams.

Why Digital Design Matters for Subsea Cable Assemblies

Anyone who has specified a subsea cable assembly knows the traditional workflow: a hand-drawn sketch or spreadsheet goes back and forth between the survey team, the connector supplier, and the moulding shop. Each revision risks a misread pin-out, a mismatched shell material, or a forgotten depth rating. In an industry where a single custom assembly can take weeks and a field failure can cost a vessel day of operations, ambiguity in the drawing is a real cost driver.

A database-driven design tool changes the economics of that workflow:

• Fewer specification errors. Selecting components from a validated database means pin counts, current ratings, shell materials and depth ratings are attached to the drawing by default, not typed in by hand.
• Faster quotations. When a design consists of real part numbers, suppliers can quote and mould without a separate engineering clarification round.
• Better documentation hygiene. Digital schemas travel with the assembly through its service life — critical for rental fleets and multi-campaign survey spreads.

The Aberdeen Deployment

SubSea Supplies will deploy the EDA from its production base in Aberdeen, combining the design tool with its existing connector range to deliver fully integrated solutions. The two companies note they have worked together for more than eight years, making this a formalization of a long-standing relationship rather than a fresh experiment.

Shaun Stirling, Head of Sales at SubSea Supplies, framed the partnership as a response to the industry's digital shift: technology adoption has become key to the subsea market's future, and clients increasingly need to digitise the diagramming of their subsea systems. Anekonnect co-founder Bhavin Shah described the combination of the design platform with SubSea Supplies' network and industry experience as "a significant leap" for offshore and marine engineering communities.

What This Signals for Buyers of Underwater Connectors and Cables

For procurement and engineering teams, the trend behind this announcement is worth watching: the boundary between component supply and design support is blurring. Distributors are no longer just forwarding catalogue PDFs — they are embedding themselves in the customer's design workflow, which raises expectations for every supplier in the chain.

In practical terms, buyers should expect more of their connector and cable partners to offer:

• Component-level data (3D models, pin-out tables, derating curves) in machine-readable form;
• Direct integration between design tools and quotation/lead-time systems;
• Assembly-level validation rather than component-only certification.

Suppliers who can provide accurate, complete technical data up front — and turn a customer's schematic into a moulded, pressure-tested assembly without an engineering ping-pong cycle — will increasingly be the ones who win the order.

MarineConn's Approach to Custom Cable Assemblies

Digital design tools are only as good as the components behind them. At MarineConn, we support custom underwater connector and cable assembly projects with full technical documentation — contact arrangements, insulation resistance, dielectric strength and hydrostatic pressure test reports — so that your design workflow starts from verified data.

• Browse our underwater connectors — wet-mate, dry-mate, hybrid opto-electrical, micro circular and high-current series;
• Review underwater cables for ROV tethers, umbilicals and instrumentation;
• See cable winches for deployment and recovery systems.

Planning a custom assembly? Contact our engineering team with your schematic — we will return a manufacturable design and a quotation.