Digital ports way of the future
Published on: Tuesday, October 29, 2019
By: David Thien
Photo: spsb.com.my
Kota Kinabalu: Port performance is a critical factor that can shape Sabah’s trade competitiveness, cut environmental pollution, costs of sea cargo clearance for importation of goods, and possibly reducing retail prices without further cabotage policy woes.Every hour of port time saved by ships translates into savings in port infrastructure expenditure for ports, ship capital costs for carriers, and inventory holding outlays for shippers. The market, as ever, makes no allowance for those who don’t keep up. Sabahans have long suffered high pricing from lack of efficiency and optimal connectivity.
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Promoting this reality, Kasi (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd’s Executive Director Benjamin Nair spoke on enabling digital ports at the 2nd Sabah Port Forum recently when he delivered a presentation on “Port Digitalisation and Connectivity” in the “Unlocking Potential in the Maritime Sector” session.
Data, information and how it’s handled will be at the core of the way ports operate in the future.
Pilots, line men, tugs, and other vessel services can optimise their operations through a focus on collaborative information sharing, create business value and increase a port’s competitiveness.
The collaborative sharing of data is critical and will enhance port operational excellence and quality of service, ultimately leading to the realisation of a “Digital Port” using IoT, cloud computing and ubiquitous network connectivity.
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Nair took the audience through a multi-party platform discourse on ports and terminals, vessel (ship) operations, vessel software providers and shore-side software providers and simulators that his firm uses to unleash untapped potential that local ports operators could avail themselves of and improve performance tremendously.
The main benefits are that processes speed up the transit response time of goods through ports operations; reduce costs to handle goods; speed the response time of stakeholders to their customers; reduce the usage of paper flow distributing information electronically; improve track and trace efficiency; and with more efficiency, lower transit time, higher integration with third parties are possible.
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Globally, there is growing public and political pressure on vessels, ports and terminals to address Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.
Nair opined, “Typical solutions are expensive and time consuming to implement.”
Kasi installed a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) bunkering simulator in Sabah as the increasing use of LNG as a clean fuel with zero sulphur emission unlike heavy fuel oil, marine diesel fuel and marine gas oil is the way forward for the future.
Malaysia is committed to implement the Sulphur 2020 regulations, a global rule that sets a 0.5 per cent limit for sulphuric content allowed in fuel oil used on board ships with effect from Jan 1, 2020 as the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) will cap global sulphur content in marine fuels at 0.5 per cent from Jan 1, 2020, down from the current 3.5 per cent. This applies outside the designated emission control areas where the limit is already 0.1 per cent.
This will significantly reduce the amount of sulphur oxide emission emanating from ships and should have major health and environmental benefits for the world, Malaysia in particular, just as Sabah is also a maritime state with ports and expanding maritime trade.
“One of the biggest inefficiencies is in the lack of cooperation between vessels and ports,” Benjamin Nair said, adding that known key challenges were fuel cost and emissions.
“Container ships spend on average six per cent time at anchor waiting for berthing, resulting in million tons of fuel consumption and emissions.
“We have reached a plateau. Many initiatives to save fuel and reduce emissions have already been explored, eg more efficient engines, alternative fuels, hybrid systems, weather routing etc.
“Fuel spend represents one of the largest cost items for many vessel operators and it is set to rise following IMO 2020,” Nair said.
According to IMO, one area where gains could be made is reducing time spent at anchorage and adopt slow steaming when possible as maritime transport emits around 940 million tonnes of CO2 annually and is responsible for about 2.6 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
A shorter time in the port is generally indicative of high port efficiency and trade competitiveness, so what can be done to improve ships turnaround time?
With port call optimisation, ships should only arrive at the right time, i.e., when they need to arrive, as arriving too early implies additional costs in ports, and sailing at unnecessarily high speeds would generate more polluting air emissions including carbon dioxide (CO2).
To arrive on time rather than in time is the aim of port call optimisation initiatives. Making use of digitalisation means that data will need to be exchanged between shipping lines, ports, shippers and intermodal transport providers.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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