Introduction: Rapid development of international trade, ocean shipping has become the major international transportation mode. In the three types of ocean shipping service (industrial shipping, tramp shipping and liner shipping), liner shipping service has increased significantly during recent decades. One main challenge currently faced by the shipping liners is how to reduce bunker fuel cost in an environment with rising and fluctuating bunker fuel prices. Controlling fuel costs are one of the single most important contributors to your bottom line. Bunker procurement decisions today have become increasingly complicated for bunker buyers and managers forcing solutions that are non -intuitive, complex and multidimensional. Bunker fuel costs could account for 50 - 60 %of a ship's total operating cost in times of high fuel prices. The volatility of the bunker market over recent years has contributed to significant instability of cash flows for shipping lines. We argue that high bunker costs are giving shipping lines a strong operational incentive to lower vessel speed and increase the time buffers in the liner services by adding an additional vessel. High bunker costs are thus helping to partly solve schedule integrity issues as they trigger a trend to increased time buffers. However, Bunker Management acts as a safeguard against manipulation of bunkered marine fuel oil as well as counteracting it. By using equipment and methods that deliver high accuracy inline and real-time measurement during bunker operations, any attempt by the bunker service to gain an economic advantage. Problem Description: A lot of time and manpower needed to manage the fuel consumption. Can manual entry and communication have involved lead to a correct decision? It is not a right thing to proceed. The bunker fuel management system strategy includes three components such as bunkering ports selection (where to bunker), bunkering quantity determination (how much to bunker) and ship speeds. As these three components are interrelated, it is necessary to optimize them jointly in order to obtain an optimal bunker fuel management strategy for a single shipping liner service. As an appropriate model representing the relationship between bunker fuel price and ship speed is important in the bunker fuel management strategy. It is found that the relationship can be different for different sizes of containerships and provide an empirical model to express this relationship for different sizes of containerships based on real data obtained from a shipping company. We further highlight the importance of using the appropriate fuel cost model in the bunker fuel management strategy as using a wrong or aggregated model can result in inferior or suboptimal strategies. Based on the optimization model, we provide the effects of port arrival time windows, bunker fuel prices, ship bunker fuel capacity and skipping port options on the bunker fuel. Ensuring smart fuel management and delivering maximum transparency when loading bunker fuel are your day-to-day challenges. Since fuel costs can account for up to 60% of your vessel, it is even more important than ever to have more control of the cost-effectiveness of your vessel.
If you operate vessels, let our experts conduct a full analysis of your fleet and advise you on the ships, which ports and what volume of bunkers. From precision flow metering systems that would bring down the possibility of dispute at the time of supply to advise on best vessel speed/displacement and consumption monitoring/tracking; we are going to be there to see to your needs. SVM Bunker Management System (BMS) is an efficient and intelligent system that assists in optimizing the Bunker procurement plan for the entire fleet. Various constraints, such as -vessel, speed, weight, port, trade, cost, commercials – are inbuilt to have an effective plan in place. BMS have smart optimizer engine integrated with Client’s application to have a seamless flow of information. Optimized plans can be generated at regular intervals, as desired – to have the most updated plan ready for varying scenarios. Transformation is Necessary In recent years, the bunker fuel costs have increased considerably to more than half of a shipping company’s total operation costs. when bunker fuel cost constitutes about three quarters of the operation cost of a large containership. Therefore, reduction of bunker fuel cost can bring substantial savings to the total operation costs. A lot of initiatives have been taken by shipping liners to reduce the bunker fuel consumption so as to reduce bunker fuel cost. Besides using some technical improvement strategies shipping liners normally adopt the slow steaming strategy to reduce the bunker fuel consumption. However, slow streaming throughout the whole trip will increase the total traveling time, which in turn may affect the schedule of the liner service. Therefore, how to adjust the ship speed at each leg of the whole service route becomes an important issue. Furthermore, bunker fuel prices at different ports can be very different even on the same day. In addition, some ports provide price discounts for refueling. The problem of where to bunker and how much to bunker is therefore another important consideration. Optimal bunker fuel management strategy, which includes bunkering ports selection, bunkering amounts determination (how much to bunker) and ship speeds adjustment (how to adjust the ship speeds along the service route). We highlight that these decisions are interrelated. Therefore, it is important to consider them jointly in order to minimize total bunker fuel related cost for a shipping liner service. Besides, we find that the empirical model representing the relationship between bunker fuel consumption rate and ship speed can be different for different ships and provide empirical models to express the relationship between bunker fuel consumption rate and ship speed for different sizes of containerships based on real data obtained from a shipping company. We highlight the importance of using the appropriate empirical model when planning bunker fuel management strategies as using a wrong or aggregated model can result in deciding on an inferior or suboptimal bunker fuel management strategy. How better results can be achieved? It is important to optimize bunkering ports, bunkering amounts and ship speed decisions together in the bunker fuel management strategy in order to minimize the total bunker fuel related costs as they are interrelated
The evolution of the bunker fuel prices at bunkering-available ports along the service route is important to the selection of optimal bunkering ports. Different evolution of bunker fuel prices may lead to different optimal bunkering ports, which shows that the current practice can be improved. The bunkering port decisions are mainly affected by the bunker fuel prices evolution along the service route, and ship speed decisions are mainly affected by the port arrival time windows. Some geographic port, which is the first port after long voyage, is likely to be chosen as bunkering port. Thus shipping liners may want to spend more effort on negotiations with these ports for larger bunker fuel price discounts. By changing some current schedules while keeping the total cycle time unchanged, the bunker fuel cost can be further reduced from that of the optimal schedule under the current given port arrival time windows. This result can be applied to cases where soft port arrival time windows can be considered. Increasing the ship bunker fuel capacity can bring relatively significant benefits for shipping liners in terms of bunker fuel related cost savings. This is a useful consideration in the deployment of ships or in the design of new ships. Skipping some ports in the given service route can also bring relatively significant bunker fuel cost reductions. This practice has been periodically adopted by some shipping liners already. With SVM BMS software, different fuels can be measured without the need for readjustment. In conjunction with other vessel data (speed, wind, waves etc.), it is possible to determine the optimum operating state for your vessel and there by maximize efficiency. How does this impact your Organization? As bunker fuel cost constitutes a major portion of the shipping liners operating cost, it is imperative for them to minimize the bunkering cost to remain competitive. Service contract with a fuel supplier is a strategy they venture on to reduce this cost. Typically, liner operators enter into a contract with fuel suppliers where the contract is specified by a fixed fuel price and amount, to mitigate the fluctuating spot prices and uncertain fuel consumption between the ports. Here, such bunkering service contracts with known parameters and determine the liner's optimal bunkering strategy. We propose to use bunker up to level policy for refueling, where the up to level is dynamic based on the observed spot price and determine the bunkering decisions (where to bunker and how much to bunker) at the ports. A dynamic programming model is formulated to minimize the total bunkering cost. Due to the inherent complexity in determining the gradient of the cost-to-go function, we estimate it by simulation. Numerical experiments suggest that all the contract parameters must be considered together in determination of the optimal bunkering strategy. Contracting an amount lesser than the average consumption for the entire voyage, at a contract price lesser than the average spot price is found to be beneficial. SVM BMS Features SVM BMS provides main features to improve the liner efficiency as follows: 
Estimates fuel consumption for the upcoming ports
Based on the VPR & Noon report, system updates the quantity of different oil types for the latest departure port. EMS can be configured in cloud based / SAAS mode, which help to reduce huge cost on hardware setup. Finalize fuel requirement using the Market price analyzing tool. Structural way of process is followed to get the quotation on the correct time. Cost effective development Update the quantity of different oil types for the latest departure port based on the VPR & Noon report. Provide graphical format of the estimated quantity of oil with high accuracy for the next port details. Create bunker requisition with minimum required quantity of oil type to reach next bunkering port. Calculate fuel cost by analyzing fuel price of adjacent bunkering port. SVM BMS Features
Performance Analysis & Platts Price Despite what we mentioned above, for most of the liner shipping companies, the current market conditions are tough indeed. The trend of increasing bunker prices has threatened the liner shipping companies’ accounting bottom line and the oversupply of containers accumulated for the past few years makes the competition especially fierce. BMS system analyses the performance based on the Fuel type, Delivery Quantity and Fuel rate. It shows the performance analyzes graph between Sailing Date Vs Quantity (Fig.1). In addition, BMS is used to compare Bunker price with market price. Entire details of the fuel type will be compared and displayed in the analysis report for the liner knowledge in Fig.2.
Figure 1: Performance Analysis Graph
Figure 2: Rate Analysis
Platts is a publisher of specialized information on oil and other commodity markets, and helps those markets function with greater transparency and efficiency. Platts observes market activity and assesses the value of commodities based on strict and publicly available methodologies. Platts provides price information and a source of benchmark price assessments from the market. Delivering transparent fuel prices data is one of the ways, Platts demonstrates dedication to helping customers in the fuel industry operate globally with greater transparency and efficiency.
Conculsion: Advice regarding bunkering procedure, sampling techniques and fuel specification standards is plentiful and generally well known throughout the industry. When problems do occur it is the ship's engineers who initially face the inconvenience and who are required to resolve whatever difficulty has arisen in short time. It is in everyone's best interests to find a solution quickly to prevent the vessel being delayed or put at risk. Solverminds has developed the Bunker Management System, as an intelligent system that continuously monitors bunker intakes, fuel transfer procedure and consumption. BMS provides flawless assistance in making decision regarding varying scenarios. The BMS development is given priority on analyzing the need for fuel management in future.