Increasing the competitiveness of ships

Many ships are not operating at the most profitable propulsion conditions, due to problems checking the service speed and fuel consumption, argues Torben Munk. In today`s economic environment, the competitiveness of a ship is dictated by the service speed and fuel consumption. It is obvious that the income of a ship increases with the speed, but profit only increases if the additional costs are less than the extra income. Also if less power is required to maintain the same service speed then fuel costs are reduced, although profit will increase only if the savings on the fuel bill are larger than the cost of reducing the consumption. Control of the speed and costs is therefore important – but how often do shipowners check that the ship is operating at its most efficient level, and by what means can this be done? Torben Munk is managing director of Navytech which undertakes continuous performance analysis of ships, and was technical director of J Lauritzen and Kund I Larsen.