The CEO’s perspective

Sep 03 2020

Mikael Laurin, CEO of Lean Marine, was formerly a customer, as CEO of Laurin Maritime from 2004 to 2018, a company which managed a fleet of sixteen 45-50,000 dwt IMO II / III chemical class ships. He is currently a board member of Team Tankers International. Here he explains why he likes the technology.

There are many green technologies available to ship owners. It is not an easy task to know which to invest in and which will deliver tangible fuel savings with a short ROI.

You don’t want to take a large capital expense for something that doesn’t deliver instant quantifiable benefits to your ship’s daily costs or operational efficiency.

But I have seen countless examples of significant wastage of energy on otherwise well-run vessels over the years. Perhaps, your vessel is one of them?

I believe preserving energy gives multiple benefits, including reducing emissions, lowering costs, postponing maintenance and strengthening corporate image.

One technology that I was lucky to encounter during my days at Laurin Maritime was FuelOpt, a propulsion optimization system.

My initial take on the technology was that of a sceptical ship-owner that questioned if the product really works and if so, why this isn’t done already or by someone else.

But the estimated saving levels were encouraging and eventually Laurin Maritime became one of Lean Marine’s first customers in 2014.

We initially installed it on six vessels, and some time thereafter implemented FuelOpt on the full fleet of medium range oil and chemical tankers. Installation was completed in few days, with no off-hire time required. We were very happy with the fuel saved and operational efficiencies gained resulting from fuel efficiencies.

Direct fuel savings of up to 15% can be achieved with FuelOpt, depending on the type of propulsion, trade and existing system settings for the vessel.

My personal experience shows well over 8% percent annual direct savings on vessels with controllable pitch propellers and additional operational savings and efficiencies on top of that.

One of our customers has a 14 000-ton product/chemical tanker with an average consumption of 15.6 tons per 24 hours. For this ship FuelOpt achieved more than 600 tons of annual fuel savings, which translated into well over $300 000 of cost savings or more than 2 million kgs of CO2 emissions saved.  

At Lean Marine, we believe that advanced technologies will play a big role in the shipping industry. We provide automating fuel savings through advanced algorithms but make sure to hide the complexity behind user-friendly interfaces.