Maritime technology company ZeroNorth has today announced the launch of its new bunker recommendation software, BunkerAction.

BunkerAction, which is being added to the suite of tools in ZeroNorth’s Optimise platform, uses data insights to provide tramp shipping operators with recommendations about where, when and what to bunker for vessels across their fleet. This will create a one-stop optimisation tool for operators.

Launching as a Beta product with more features to be added in the coming weeks and months, BunkerAction uses currently available data, such as vessel specifics, position, route, ETA, and tank capacity, as well as ZeroNorth data spanning bunker prices, weather, port details, sailing distances and market rates, to generate its actionable bunker planning insights.

Through its algorithm, BunkerAction calculates necessary parameters to make recommendations to operators about their bunker procurement. For example, depending on weather, market rates and dynamic speed and consumption, BunkerAction may recommend that a vessel takes on bunkers at an alternative port, if it calculates that cost and efficiency savings can be generated.

The impact of BunkerAction’s recommendations include the cost benefit and emissions transparency of each potential decision. Furthermore, as it is available in ZeroNorth’s Optimise, BunkerAction is an easy-to-use online tool which doesn’t require installation or any investment in vessel hardware.

Katrine Hastrup, Product Owner, ZeroNorth, said: “We are delighted to get BunkerAction into the hands of owners and operators. We believe that the power of this new tool – in tandem with other actionable insights created in our Optimise platform – will help operators to unlock meaningful and transparent cost savings for their operations.

“Fuel is the single largest cost for most owners and operators in tramp shipping, so it makes sense that we apply the power of cutting-edge digital technologies to drive a meaningful impact. By taking available data from a vessel or fleet, we can generate immediate recommendations that we believe have the potential to revolutionise the way operators execute bunker planning.”

The new bunker recommendation software will be available in ZeroNorth’s Optimise platform. Alongside this new functionality, Optimise provides insight into vessel performance and determines the optimal speed of each vessel to optimise bunker spend. It monitors the entire fleet and alerts the operators if a vessel has the possibility to increase TCE by changing speed or considering alternative bunker ports.