Lloyd’s List deemed their ship, the Afros, ‘Ship of the Year’ in 2018 and their success has not stopped there. The company received their second award in the 2019 SAFETY4SEA Awards in the ‘GREEN4SEA Dry Bulk Operator’ category. With a focus on technological integration, software innovation and environmental protection, our customer, Blue Planet Shipping, continuously inspires Navarino. Established in 1996, the Piraeus-based company currently manages 14 bulk carrier vessels, including its award winning ‘Afros’ vessel.
Blue Planet Shipping is already ahead of their time; they’re the first company worldwide to manage a vessel with wind-assisted ship propulsion systems, which generate lift to make the Afros vessel much more efficient in terms of speed, fuel, and costs. The 4 moveable turbines reduce the overall cost of the vessel by reducing fuel consumption. Additionally, the turbines significantly reduce emissions created by the vessel. With Blue Planet Shipping being a founding member of the Thalassa Foundation – a charity aimed at preserving the marine environment and its endangered species – the turbines further support their strong environmental ethos.
Moreover, to further emphasize Blue Planet’s drive towards digitalization, through their collaboration with Argo Systems they have deployed a fully integrated real-time BPM system that leverages the benefits of new technologies such as Navarino’s FleetXpress. More specifically, this software greatly streamlines the wide range of cross-departmental day-to-day business needs and activities (e.g. operations, technical, crew, procurement, accounting, etc.). Furthermore, Blue Planet aims to monitor the performance of machinery on board the ships through telemetry, by extensively using Navarino’s FX. Following the conduct of various tests, it’s been determined that the need for bandwidth capacity may reach 40GB per day. Such traffic could not be supported efficiently without FleetXpress.
With this being said, Blue Planet suggest that all of these technological improvements couldn’t, in part, be done without some of Navarino’s technology. “We’re making the most out of Navarino’s infrastructure” says Mr. Theodoros Pandis, Head of IT. “Prior to installing Fleet Xpress, vessel updates for all our vessels could take as long as 2 weeks, we can now have them in just a couple of hours thanks to the FleetXpress service provided by Navarino”. All 14 vessels currently have Fleet Broadband, which provides a reliable service, fully supporting ARGO ERP’s functionality by automatically synchronizing databases between office and vessels. Although, the new FX bandwidth reduces considerably the transmission time, offering a plethora of other opportunities such as expedited support and real time information. Thus, “we already have 2 vessels switched to FX, and we’re in the process of moving more over now”.
Blue Planet also have Navarino’s Infinity Cube systems installed on all vessels, which provide a high availability and performance virtualization environment. Although Infinity Standard and Infinity Plus exist, Blue Planet chose Infinity Cube not only for features such as centralized management, communication efficiency, and automated, flexible reporting, but because Infinity Cube’s dual nodes provide full redundancy.
“It’s ‘plug and play’ when it comes to Navarino solutions; everything can be resolved in just 3-clicks. It’s given us the opportunity to build on our software systems and create a really efficient and streamlined network with the ability to add more everyday functionalities such as Skype Business for communicating with our Captains, or to the more complex ones, such as sensors being used to analyze data and save costs”.
Navarino’s VP of Market Intelligence, Kiriakos Striboulis, who also acts as account manager for Blue Planet added ‘Blue Planet is a company that pays attention to every single detail and which is always looking to improve every single aspect of their everyday operations.
As a company, they have managed to achieve significant growth over the years. We consider Blue Planet as pioneers in IT deployments & software solutions and we are honoured that they have put their trust in Navarino’s products and services. We look forward to continuing our successful cooperation with Blue Planet in the years to come.’