Our Passion at Klaveness - Killing Dinosaurs!

During my frequent talks with one of my guide and mentor, Henry Mytton Mills, which I always enjoy, one of questions he asks is how many ship owners today are “real” ship owners? Most of the owners today are “investors in disguise”. A real ship owner essentially is what the original owners were – purely involved in carrying goods for shippers from one port to another. These were the guys who used to come down to the Baltic coffee house in good old days, which later became the Baltic Exchange. Today most of the so-called owners are simply investing in a ship and letting them out to operators, leaving them to perform the duties of a real owner. They are essentially managing a financial portfolio. Maybe this explains why there is a fair bit of resistance to embrace new technology as these investor-owners are getting money by letting out the ship already in a traditional way so why spend any money on technology?

But I digress. The above was just to highlight the dinosaur nature of the maritime industry to embrace change and invest in new technology. I am proud to be a part of Torvald Klaveness and we are indeed a real ship owner and therefore keenly investing in and adapting new technology, with a specific aim to add value to our customers – those who need to actually move the goods from a port to another. We are able to do this as we are not only investors but also real ship owners.

So essentially it all boils down to this – real shipping is a true service industry and the shipping contract must move with times and enhance the service experience for its customers. But as we become more technology savvy, the industry still has some dinosaurs to kill.

Let us look at some examples. One of the key requirements in a voyage charter is to tender a valid notice of readiness. The “arrived ship” has been a legal issue for ages but is it not time to retire this one – once and for all? The history of this requirement is steeped in old times when the owner of the wooden and steamship had to announce his arrival for a lot of processes to kickstart at the load or discharge port. This is not the case today. With the modern technology, a shipper or port authority can specify the exact location that the ship needs to be at by pinpointing the exact coordinates of a spot or an area on the globe. The ship can arrive at that exact place and tender the notice. This can be verified to the last second through satellite data and such data can be shared by the ship owner with the shipper to leave no doubts or grey areas – pretty much like a car parking itself in a designated spot and taking a drone click with a time stamp to prove that it has arrived and parked. Why is this not happening? One reason could be access to technology for the ship owner and costs associated with that. However, if the shippers or receivers start insisting on such data-sharing, the owners will have little choice but to comply and the cost of getting such data is much lower today and getting lower by the day. Another reason may be the need for some “dodgy operators” to hide the fact that the vessel had in fact not arrived when they tendered the notice. Ambiguity is the friend of the dark side. Finally, the reason could be simple and plain inertia and laziness on part of the parties. My point being, all these reasons will eventually have to be discarded but the initiatives have to come from within the industry.

Another example it the requirement of tendering of Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) notices prior arrival at a port. This is again a legacy from the age of founding fathers. The need arose from the fact that, in the old days, it was only the ship owner or the captain who could map the position of the ship and the other parties needed to be advised of the position of the ship on a regular basis so that they could plan their operations better. Again, satellite technology today makes this requirement redundant. The reasons to hold on this requirement are the same as previously stated. Some of the receivers (such as the sand buyers in Singapore) have already started insisting that devices such as purple finder needs to be installed on board to track the vessel’s position.

 The only way to change is to lead by example. Klaveness has been enhancing itself on the digital path and doing it purely to add value to our customers and make their life easier. These requirements of the Charter Party have become redundant to those customers who are using our CARGO platform (https://cargovalue.com) . With an ability to keep complete track of all the vessels which are nominated to you through satellite data and also combining this with an intelligent inventory tracker, CARGO is now being used by our clients to efficiently manage the cargo flow to avoid bunching up of the vessels and thereby avoiding demurrage, take immediate action in case of any unforeseen delay, predict future inventory levels and effectively manage nomination process and get one single screen where all the stakeholders can feed in the data to avoid duplicating tasks and prevent manual errors. The reason why this is a success is the willingness of Klaveness to be transparent and fair and lead by example. The costs involved for getting such a service are affordable and the benefits far outstrip the costs involved. Currently, this is a huge value addition that we are providing to our clients.

Slowly but surely, the industry is changing and we are driving a few twists and turns in that at Klaveness by going back to basic building block of any business – the customer. The most intriguing thing is that the “knights” who are killing some of these dinosaurs are not even shipping experts. That should not be a complete surprise as one of the largest “taxi” company in the world – Uber – owns no vehicles of their own!

If any of you wish to know more about the CARGO platform or any other services we offer, please visit www.klaveness.com and https://cargovalue.com or you can contact me as well.