Last year, Maersk Line owned and chartered fleet comprising 550 vessels completed about 37004 voyages called 33000 ports using 380 terminals in 117 countries.
Given the sheer scope of Maersk Line’s operations, the Company is committed to reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. This puts energy efficiency as one of the crucial objectives. That means taking careful steps towards optimizing these 37004 voyages in terms of energy efficiency. Wondering how do they go about ensuring the successful implementation of this endeavour? That’s where Maersk Line’s Global Voyage Centre (GVC) comes into the picture.
The Global Voyage Centre hosts a giant screen that, monitors in real-time, the position of all the Maersk Line owned and chartered vessels. A team of senior seafarers monitors these vessels 24×7 and provides support to improve their energy performance and facilitate best practice sharing.
“The Global Voyage Centre was setup as a project in July 2013 by selecting a few Captains and Senior Navigating Officers from the fleet join the team with an objective to bridge the communication gap between the shore staff and the fleet as well as monitor the vessels on long ocean passages on a real time basis. The GVC has since evolved to take on a more proactive approach towards energy efficiency and route optimisation. It is now an integral part of the Fleet Performance team under Ship Management and works alongside other teams in the organisation to best support our owned and chartered vessels.” says Domingos Silva Jr., Head of Global Voyage Centre.
Voyage planning and execution
The voyage planning for the vessels starts a few days before the departure of the vessel. The pre-voyage assessment is carried out as the first step to support the vessel with all the necessary information to plan an efficient voyage based on the database and experience available in the team. The best in class plan is rolled out for the vessel to follow basis this data but adjusted on case to case basis, as necessary. Following this, further guidance and dialogue is initiated with vessels to discuss considerations such as power strategy, trim optimization, and weather routing for the vessels a day or two before the voyage starts.
The GVC team also monitors the vessels in real time through the help of navigational tools and has all the information of the vessels in transit. While the vessel is sailing, the GVC team actively communicates with the Master’s onboard while monitoring and providing inputs for ETA communication, bad weather, tsunami & earthquake warnings, and stoppages at sea. The team of experts oversees that the vessels adhere to the agreed voyage plan and picks up the deviations, if any. These inputs in the end support the vessels in executing the voyages in the most efficient and economical way.
Eco Voyage / Fuel optimization
Throughout the voyage planning, one of the important aspects taken into consideration is fuel optimization which happens to be the key part of Maersk Line’s long term strategy. The ECO Voyage program in conjunction with other tools is used by vessels to carefully plan and execute the most optimal voyage. GVC provides the vessels with first level support to ensure the requisite parameters in the program are in order.
“There is a strong connection between CO2 emissions and profitability. Maersk Line has emerged as a sustainability CSR leader and fuel optimisation remains a key part of the strategy to ensure that we are well on our way to achieve our 2020 target of 60% reduction of CO2 emissions per container over 2007 levels”, says Captain Gaurav Lal, Senior Marine Operations Manager at the Global Voyage Centre.
The close monitoring helps in contributing to the savings in bunker fuel costs. Last year, it contributed in saving USD 8.5 million bunker fuel for Maersk Line.
Source & Image Credit: Maersk
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