Client story: Blockshipping
Supporting the green agenda for the global container shipping industry
Increasing operational efficiency for marine container terminals
while reducing the CO2 footprint for the entire industry
Blockshipping improve the efficiency for marine container terminals and the shipping industry through AI by predicting the pickup time (dwell time) of import containers.
Their solution reduces housekeeping moves at marine container terminals and increases throughput capacity by predicting container import dwell time before discharge. With 2021.AI, Blockshipping are offering AI models to help marine container terminals, ocean carriers, BCOs, and service providers become more efficient, save costs and reduce their carbon footprint.
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The challenge
Today, most container terminals have a traditional and random stacking method for placing import containers in the yard. Terminal operators have little certainty about how long a specific import container will remain in the yard and when somebody will pick it up, so the stacking is neither efficient nor cost-optimized.
The average cost of shuffling a single container is around €25. AI Import Dwell-time Prediction (AI-IDP) has proven to reduce the number of moves by more than 30% and better use the often limited space available in container terminals. Furthermore, it has also been shown to reduce the truck-turn-time such that the trucks on average spend 25% less time at the terminal fetching their designated container, thus further reducing CO2 emissions.
Traditionally, these patterns have been too complex to implement in a classical expert model for dwell time prediction. Therefore, Blockshipping have tried, with great success, to use AI algorithms to automatically search for patterns in container discharge data such that they can determine the dwell time and proactively stack containers optimally.
The solution
As a result, using AI has materially improved operational efficiency for marine container terminals while reducing the CO2 footprint of the shipping industry.
The partnership between Blockshipping and 2021.AI has helped overcome a 40-year old industry challenge. By combining Blockshipping’s deep industry experience with 2021.AI’s Grace platform and data science expertise for developing advanced models, the AI-IDP solution delivers significant savings for container terminals by reducing yard shifts in import stacks.
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Since the beginning of container transport, it has been normal practice for terminals to accept random stacking of import containers and a relatively high number of yard shifts to dig out the container at the time of delivery to importers. Using AI and machine learning, we provide a solution that enables intelligent stacking by predicting each container’s dwell time. AI-IDP is TOS agnostic and will benefit yard operations at any terminal using any operating system.
The results
In addition to lowering the cost of operations, AI-IDP also reduces carbon emissions. Based on the potential, Blockshipping recently received funding from the the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme (EUDP). According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), maritime transport emits around 940 million tonnes of CO2 annually and is responsible for about 2.5% of GHG emissions. Using AI-IDP, container terminals can make operations more efficient and reduce their emissions. For an average-sized terminal, this can lead to a reduction of more than 2,500 tonnes per year, making the AI-IDP solution can contribute significantly to reducing CO2 emissions.
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The AI-IDP solution from Blockshipping has redefined our expectations regarding how AI can be used to reduce unproductive container moves to optimize import delivery further. Additionally, we are seeing the potential for our customers to increase CHE utilization, which will help them increase throughput and reduce their carbon footprint.
Project highlights
- An AI-IDP solution delivers significant savings for container terminals by reducing yard shifts in import stacks
- Improving operational efficiency for marine container terminals reduces costs and the CO2 footprint of the shipping industry
- Reducing infrastructure investments as AI-IDP maximizes the current land and asset use
- AI-IDP deployed and hosted on Grace make it easily and robustly scaleable
About the project
Blockshipping have entered a partnership with 2021.AI. Partnering with 2021.AI can unlock an organization’s AI potential and value. 2021.AI’s comprehensive yet flexible AI platform, Grace, automates and simplifies the implementation of AI, supporting its full lifecycle, developing, operating, and integrating AI models into an organization’s production and IT environment.
About Blockshipping
Founded to launch a global IT platform that seeks to improve container logistic efficiencies. The company consist of a team of industry experts working with leading AI specialists to help marine container terminals, ocean carriers, BCOs, and service providers become more efficient, save costs and reduce their carbon footprint. Besides AI-IDP, Blockshipping invest in optimizing container inventory management, facilitating terminal truck exchanges, and building the Blockchain Container Asset Register for the shipping industry.