CPO Containerschiffreederei & BVS

The Challenge

For any company in the ship charter industry, accurately predicting the weather and its effect on a ship’s course is mission critical. CPO Containerschiffreederei has more than 40 years of experience in the industry, but it needed to improve its access to real-time weather data in order to continue to provide world-class service to its customers.

Further, CPO Containerschiffreederei soon realized that having weather forecasts available anywhere in the world was not enough. The company needed a tool that would also turn accurate weather information into actionable route options for its 64-ship fleet.

We had a need to dig deeper,” said Captain Ortwin Mühr, Head of Nautical Department. “Due to the pressure on the charter market, we needed the ability to conduct a more in-depth search for the optimum track. We needed a tool that would allow us to quickly apply that weather data for real-time weather routing.”

Considerations

Enter StormGeo’s Bon Voyage System (BVS™), which provides the most recent weather and ocean data, as well as generating easily interpretable maps to give each ship’s crew the visual information to plan for problem areas and optimize their routes.

“One of the key factors when we evaluated tools was having a graphical interface that people could easily understand,” said Mühr. “With BVS, a navigator could
– mostly even without reading the manual – quickly understand the data. It’s simple and self-explanatory.”

For CPO Containerschiffreederei, having a partner that understood what could be expected from a ship in a full range of possible conditions was a critical issue. Mr. Mühr: StormGeo uses advanced analytics and has a pool of experience in regards to ship routing, they are able to provide a reliable outlook for the individual constraints and their related impact, which a vessel will face during her ocean passage. This combined with a tool to avoid parametric rolling or any sort of resonance condition which could be encountered by sea and swell, was our major concern.

Solution

Since implementing BVS, CPO Containerschiffreederei demands for data and functionality have steadily increased, but the software has improved step by step along with them. Over the years, BVS has often provided exactly the information needed in difficult moments.

“For example, the high-resolution wind and wave condition simulations of the tool have been particularly helpful to me in situations where we needed to prove to a charterer why a ship would not be able to sail a certain course, and that the inability to do that had nothing to do with seaworthiness,” said Mühr. “The only opportunity to prove that was through StormGeo’s software. BVS is one of the few products that provides such a function.”

Benefits

Among the many benefits Containerschiffreederei CPO has seen from its use of BVS are fewer weather-related accidents and reduced damage to the vessels. Customers are pleased, too, with the positive results.

“We have higher satisfaction among our charterers because they see our vessels running on an optimum track, saving fuel and staying on schedule,” said Mühr. “I would definitely recommend the Bon Voyage software to other companies.”