Christian Bonfils believes a pilot project being undertaken by BW Dry Cargo has the potential to cut the company’s fuel bill by up to one-tenth.
If it is successful, the bulker owner’s managing director suggested it could be used to the same effect by the wider BW Group.
BW Dry Cargo is testing Miros speed measuring technology — designed for the offshore market but never used in shipping before — on its 81,000-dwt newbuilding BW Rye (built 2019).
“My estimate would be between 7% and 10% fuel savings, which is a lot,” Bonfils said.
“The irony is if you put on a kite or rotor, they say you will save 5%. That is religion as nobody can measure that. Now we can.”
Number of variables
He argued that while a vessel is under construction, everything is measured in millimetres.
Once it is launched and trading that changes to metres, while wave height measurements are taken daily by the captain, with contracts having tolerance measures built in for a number of variables.
“If you are on your iPhone and see it is sunny today in Oslo, it can rain in Lillestrom,” Bonfils said during an interview at Nor-Shipping today.
“In the ocean, we have agreed that if the sun shines in Oslo it definitely shines in Copenhagen or even London and, if the waves in Oslo are one metre, they are also one metre in Copenhagen.”
With the Miros system, the company receives live data on ocean currents, wave heights and other variables, allowing the ship to sail in a more responsive way, which Bonfils compared to captaining a small dinghy.
“We have worked on a Bunkerthon project for a year now, with all of our stakeholders and clients.
"BW Group have invested in a marine IT company called Alpha Ori working on SMARTShip, and the Miros solution get us very close to accurate and live figures.
"Can scale it up'
“If it works on the BW Rye, which is the pilot ship right now, we can scale it up to BW Dry Cargo and also BW Group.”
BW Dry Cargo was launched in 2016 and the company today has nine vessels on the water.
“It has gone very well," Bonfils said. "We have been successful in trading assets that we wanted.
“We had good timing when we started buying and the ships we have sold we have taken profit.
“Now we just measure the temperature of the market. We are not buyers now. We think it’s too expensive.”
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