SIBCON 2024: ZeroNorth discusses challenges and opportunities of Singapore digital bunkering landscape

Digital platform

Published Tue, 15th October 2024
by Admin

Kenneth Juhls, Managing Director of ZeroNorth Bunker highlights Singapore alone presents a significant opportunity to digital bunkering with the significant amount of bunker fuel traded every year.

Singapore alone presents a significant opportunity to digital bunkering with the significant amount of bunker fuel traded every year, said Kenneth Juhls, Managing Director of digital bunkering platform solutions provider ZeroNorth Bunker on Tuesday (8 October).

Juhls said out of about 250 million tonnes of bunker fuels traded every year between suppliers and buyers around the world, 50 million tonnes of that is taking place in Singapore.

With that, there is a huge amount of paperwork and forms that are being filled out for the delivery between a supplier and a receiving vessel, and the amount of fuel has also been on another vessel or a tank.

“The entire value chain is filled up with paper documentation. There’s huge opportunity here by digitising that,” he said during his Digital Deliveries and E-Bunker Delivery Note (eBDN) in Practice presentation at the Pre-Conference Symposium of the 23rd Singapore International Bunkering Conference (SIBCON 2024).

During his presentation, he described the key features of an electronic bunker delivery note (e-BDN) solution, including digital collaboration, error reduction, and increased safety.

He pointed out a “cool feature” in the e-BDN solution that may be overlooked is that it can now start to register all key timestamps of activities throughout the barge operations from planning to delivery.

“Here, you can see how effective you are in utilising assets, for both the supplier and barge operation side,” he said.

Juhls said efficiencies could also be gained when buyers choose to subscribe to an integration to the solution so they could also get all the delivery information automatically and digitally immediately after the BDN has been issued, instead of sending in an email, a paper format or waiting for administration staff to process it.

He also provided a timeline of Singapore’s digitalisation efforts, starting from April 2021 with the initiative from MPA to accelerate digitalisation in the bunkering industry, the development of a minimal viable product by the end of 2022 and live trials throughout 2023.

Juhls ended his presentation by sharing ZeroNorth’s learnings over the two-year period including emphasis on the importance of ease of use, connectivity, and continuous improvement in the solution.

“We must remember the crew members are not on shore and are actually on sea which is not always easy to operate in those environments. So the e-BDN solution has to be easy and intuitive to use so they can execute their business,” he said.

He also said they encountered connectivity issues at some parts of some areas in the Port of Singapore which was a challenge. To overcome that, an offline mode is a critical component to execute the full workflow without being connected to the internet and submit everything to all the parties when the system is back online.

He highlighted the importance of working closely with customers and adapting the solution based on feedback.

“Even though we’ve now been live for more than 10 months, we still learn new things every day, and we still improve the solution,” he added.

Juhls concluded with the need for partnerships with first movers and ambitious companies to gather valuable insights for further development of the e-BDN solutions.

Photo credit: Manifold Times and ZeroNorth
Published: 15 October, 2024

SIBCON 2024: ZeroNorth discusses challenges and opportunities of Singapore digital bunkering landscape

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