Dutch firm We4Sea signs up as Inmarsat application provider, and signs contract with heavy-lift shipowner Roll Group
Press release: Dutch performance monitoring company We4Sea and Inmarsat, the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications, have signed an agreement for We4Sea to join the fast-growing group of over 40 certified providers offering applications via Inmarsat’s digital solutions Fleet Data and Fleet Connect.
The announcement coincides with news of a first We4Sea-Inmarsat collaboration to secure fleet-wide uptake for We4Sea’s web-based vessel performance monitoring service. Heavy-lift shipowner Roll Group successfully trialled the benefits of the cloud-based ship performance management tool without commitment after the dual installation of Fleet Xpress with the Fleet Data IoT platform embedded.
The combination of the free of charge Fleet Data and application trialling without risk will provide a “tipping point” for maritime digitalisation, according to Marco Cristoforo Camporeale, Head of Maritime Digital, Inmarsat.
“This is the first example of a future-proof IoT set-up for ships that allow owners to investigate digitalisation without commitment,” he says. “They can assess applications off the shelf and, if they work, agree on terms. In this case, the We4Sea trials on RollDock Star and RollDock Storm helped optimised speed and generator efficiency that led to a significant cut in fuel consumption.”
Requiring no hardware onboard, the We4Sea application uses a Digital Twin as the basis for comparison with the most easily accessible ship and operating profile data.
Variations with the Digital Twin and ship data are flagged as potential inefficiencies that need action or correction reporting. Under the Certified Application Provider agreement, We4Sea cloud analytics uses the dedicated Fleet Data bandwidth to secure always-on, or on-demand ship-shore communication via an Application Programming Interface.
“We4Sea and Inmarsat’s solution improves our monitoring possibilities and increases the effectiveness of communication with vessels. In this way we can keep investing and improving our state-of-the-art vessels,” said Michiel van der Knaap, Fleet Director, Roll Group.
“A lot of owners understand that their vessels should be connected to the internet, but still think in terms of remote monitoring based on conventional connectivity using expensive bandwidth,” said Dan Veen, Founder and CEO of We4Sea. “Using an IoT-based platform, We4Sea has proved itself to be able to deliver measurable performance improvements, even when connecting to only eight standard shipboard datasets at a fixed monthly fee,” he said.
We are delighted that our solution is now available under the terms of Inmarsat’s Certified Application Programme (CAP),” he adds. “Having established our solution on container ships, bulk carriers, and heavy lift vessels, we are now very much in the scaling-up phase.”
Camporeale concludes: “Building Fleet Data capability into Fleet Xpress has allowed Roll Group to make up its own mind about third party applications based on individual merit and without upfront costs. The fact that the customer moved so swiftly from trial to fleet-wide commitment is a testament to the We4Sea application and the embedded Fleet Data as a true digital enabler.”
