Wärtsilä wins deal to install route exchange on 50 tankers

Finnish technology company Wärtsilä has won a contract to update the electronic chart display and information systems (ECDIS) on board 50 tankers that frequently sail in the Baltic Sea. 

The deal has been awarded within the Safety of Navigation in the Baltic Sea by Sea Traffic Management (STM Balt Safe) project. 

Currently, more than 400 ships have the capability to share routes through their ECDIS.

As explained, the project now further improves tanker safety in the Baltic Sea by enabling route exchange on more tankers and providing digital vessel traffic services (VTS) to them.

“We believe that standardised information sharing is an important key to improve safety and efficiency in the shipping industry. STM makes sharing secure, interoperable and customer controlled,” Torsten Büssow, Director, Wärtsilä Voyage, commented.

“With installations happening this year, we will be able to analyze data from the interaction between ships and between ships and shore,” Cajsa Jersler Fransson, STM Balt Safe Ship Testbed Manager, said. 

The STM Balt Safe project is piloting new operational services based on the STM concept. For example, the Saab-based VTS in Estonia, the Navielektro-based VTS in Finland and the new VTS system in Sweden will be able to receive and send route plans to vessels, enabling services like route cross-check and risk situation alert.

Information is transferred via the automatic identification system (AIS) between ships. Between ships and shore, the data is shared through the maritime digital infrastructure previously contracted to the non-profit industry consortium Navelink.

Being implemented from January 2019 until June 2021, the STM Balt Safe project aims to improve the safety of navigation of the tanker shipping segment through STM.

Other project objectives include improving maritime safety, efficiency and environmental performance by providing added value services; providing ships and VTS centres improved situational awareness; developing and testing new digital VTS services and improving speed and accuracy of ship-shore information exchange.

In addition, the project aims to offer the existing STM fleet, ships from RTF and EfficientFlow as well as other STM compliant ships an STM environment to operate in.