Sweden’s Wallenius Marine and Finland’s ABB are launching a digital vessel support centre as a service for other shipowners.
Its first remote centre has been built at the Swedish shipowner’s headquarters in the centre of Stockholm, and its manager, Jesper Logdstrom, told TradeWinds they have already lined up customers.
The focus will be on small to medium-size shipowners without the in-house resources to make the most of using a remote digital service to improve performance.
The initial offering from the joint venture, to be called Oversea, will focus on support for Carbon Intensity Indicator improvements, main engine monitoring and reporting, as well as maintenance.
Future modules will include other environmental data and voyage improvement tools including trim optimisation.
Voyage optimisation will include weather routing options that use the tools ABB secured when it acquired the routing division of DTN this year.
The joint venture has been rolling out its initial range of services to Wallenius vessels and potential customers as it secretly evolved and developed its offering.
In the centre — or even at home, as the tools are all cloud-based — a small team of Oversea staff, comprising former masters and chief engineers, can offer support to shipborne crews.
Osku Kalkaja, head of digital business at ABB Marine & Ports, said Oversea will utilise the Genix platform from ABB that resides on the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Industrial platform
Genix is used by ABB for its non-marine and ports businesses, such as mining and industrial power. It promotes the platform as a set of high-power industrial analytics tools to help decision-making.
By using the platform, Oversea has the opportunity to expand its digital offering if it finds there is customer demand.
Logdstrom said Oversea will initially seek to attract customers with a focus on environmental performance and who may be starting on their digital journey.
Most likely they will be based in northern Europe, although there have been trials with a cruise operator in the US.
The Genix platform includes communication systems, cyber security, and cloud and edge computing.
This latter is a useful addition as it allows data to be stored locally and then synchronised at times when connectivity between ship and shore is lost.
Logdstrom also said a key use for the data collection in Oversea is to assess operational discussions such as docking cycles, hull cleaning and even the performance of the hull coatings.
Although Oversea will be launched with the Stockholm centre initially, the plan is to have two or three centres as the business grows, to allow around-the-clock support.
