Our customers are tugboat operators, from one port operators to international players. They are involved in harbor- or terminal towage or both. On this page you will find information on how they have used our products to reduce their cost, expand their business profitably and increase their market shares. Data can be a powerful tool if used right as these tugboat operators can show.
Waste Free Shipping
A large regional harbor and terminal towage operator was looking for a method to save fuel without investing in technical upgrades. They had already installed fuel consumption meters on board a substantial amount of their tugs and were monitoring the fuel consumption closely. Yet they could not see the reductions they were hoping to achieve.
Reporting on the sailing speeds of their fleet while mobilizing and demobilizing showed that there was significant potential to reduce fuel consumption by reducing speeds. While they knew that for many of their tugs the optimal speed was below 8 knots, the speed reports LionRock Maritime provided showed that there was excessive speeding over 8 knots even upto 60% of all lightsailing.
Despite this finding the client was hesitant to implement LionRock’s “Waste Free Shipping” solution. How could a simple performance feedback on speeding be add any value in the drive to lower fuel use?
We hence started small with the implementation in one of their operations. It involved a water system that incorporated 3 ports where our client has 6 tugs in operation. The baseline speed measurement showed that speeding in excess of 8 knots was done around 60% of all freesailing time. The implementation involved weekly speed performance reporting on a captain level. Within 2 months speeding went down from 60% on average to less than 20%. Representing an annual saving of about EUR 250.000,-
Following this success the client chose to implement LionRock’s Waste Free Shipping solution in 6 more ports
Port Exploration
Fairplay Towage Group wanted to expand its operation to the Canary Islands, but lacked insights on the market in terms of size and operation. Fairplay therefore approached LionRock Maritime to conduct a market research on all of the Canaries.
Our software processed 2 years of AIS data on the various ports in the Canaries, generating the following insights on the market:
Backed by our research, the Fairplay Towage Group established an operation in the Canary Islands in 2020, despite the difficulties it faced getting the required license.
Market Tracking
Our customer have used our insights to win market share. Interested to know how? Here’s one example of a customer that was able to show its superior service performance towards its vehicle carriers customers. With the support of AIS data and our software we were able to track the the berthing and unberthing times of vehicles carriers of various size ranges in a port. This proved that our customer was able to consistently shave of about 15 minutes of the assist time.
Especially for your container line and vehicles carriers customers, reducing time in port is critical. Imagine you can document with data that your service times are superior than your competitors’ and show that you bring in and take out a ship faster than they can. This puts you at a superior seat when contract negotiations are up again, maybe even allowing to steer the discussion away from only being about price.
Get your personalized report for your towage business. Do you want to explore the data of your port, safe fuel, and operational costs, or want to expand your business to other ports? We got you covered with Data and recommendations for your business needs. Schedule a free demo with us to explore more!
Through cutting edge data technology you will get immediate and unprecedented insight into your towage businesses in any port in the world, including your own.