BIMCO, Shipdex Team Up on Data Digitalization

Shipowners association BIMCO and Shipdex have signed an agreement to support the development and exchange of technical and logistic data across the shipping community. 

The agreement, under which BIMCO will be included as an executive member of Shipdex steering committee, was signed at BIMCO Head office, Copenhagen by Lars Robert Pedersen, BIMCO Deputy Secretary General and representatives from the original nine executive members – Grimaldi Group S.P.A., Mastermind Shipmanagement, Alfa Laval Tumba AB, MacGregor Group AB, Man Diesel & Turbo SE, Shipdex Consulting, Yanmar Company, G&C Shipping and Rolls-Royce PLC.

As informed in a joint statement, the two organizations share a common interest to promote the standardization and digitalisation of data exchange in the shipping industry, with recently elected BIMCO President Anastasios Papagiannopoulos, setting it out as a key theme for his presidential term.

“This new venture will be of great benefit to our members and will complement BIMCO’s exciting portfolio of products and services. Shipdex fits neatly with our objective to help ease the administrative burdens for ships and masters. Shipowners will be able to reduce time, administration and costs as this new system is quicker and easier to use, with zero disruption to the ship at sea,“ Lars Robert Pedersen, Deputy Secretary General at BIMCO said.

“We are convinced that Shipdex™ Protocol is the best candidate to become the universal standard for the exchange of technical data. Securing the support of the final user is the next step ahead for the diffusion of real electronic documentation, when this happens the industry will save money, time, paper and space because Shipdex™ Protocol has all the necessary features to become the universal standard for the shipping industry,” Shipdex Chairman, Giancarlo Coletta added.

The Shipdex™ Protocol is described as being designed to be used by shipowners, shipyards, manufacturers, classification societies and application service providers, it uses a common source database to store, retrieve, publish and exchange technical and logistic data across the shipping community.

“Instruction manuals, maintenance plans, and spare parts catalogs can be shared between any company or organization that wishes to use it, in a neutral and standardized format, safely and securely,” the organization said.