Page 33: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2021)

WORKBOAT KOTUG

Watch the video @ bit.ly/3EAL7fm

Almar van Herk,

Senior Business

Development

Manager, KOTUG,

Images courtesy KOTUG

BV. is a partnership of KOTUG with Circle Line Logistics swapped to either battery, hydrogen or any other type,” based

B.V., designed to make cities more liveable by restoring exist- on availability and the economics of the solution.

ing inner-city waterways by using them to transport garbage, construction materials and retail products. Smart Routing

In addition to the quanti? able emission reductions, there are While fuel and energy consumption is an obvious and large tangible business drivers too, as with the modular approach portion of the decarbonization discussion, equally important and lean assembly method, KOTUG says the construction is the digitalization discussion, speci? cally optimizing route time of the E-Pusher vessels is cut dramatically compared to and propulsion performance regardless of fuel. conventional vessels. “If you look into conventional push- Enter OptiPort.

ers, the construction will take you about approximately 12 “OptiPort is a dispatch, routing and reporting tool created to months or more,” said van Herk. “We can build this vessel in schedule and sail vessels from A to B,” said van Herk. “Tra- four months.” As he explained, it is essentially analogous to a ditionally, this (activity) is done manually, but with OptiPort large LEGO set, with construction enabled nearly anywhere, this process is fully automated,” an automated dispatching from a traditional shipyard setting to a lake or, if desired, “in system based on historical and real-time information bridg- the middle of the desert.” ing port and terminal information with ship operations. Just as

While there are many, arguably the biggest design high- importantly, OptiPort is not simply a concept, rather a reality, light is the variety of energy containers ranging from Stage V already working in the real world with multiple references. diesel, (bio)gas and hydrogen to battery solutions, capable of OptiPort is a tool supporting ? eet owners in optimizing ex- handling both AC or DC power. pected departure- and arrival times, routing and speed control, “The design is developed to handle all kinds of energy types leading to reduced energy usage and just-in-time departure to (help) facilitate the energy transition,” said van Herk. “So at and arrival. The system is active since 2017, currently in use the start, the ePusher series is able to handle more traditional by vessel operators in Australia, Japan, the U.S., Canada, Bel- diesel stage ? ve containers or gas containers that can be easily gium and the Netherlands.

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