Minerva turns to Dualog to boost fleets wide data transfer needs

(Posted on 31/10/24)

Minerva Dry Inc. (managing 11 Bulk Carriers and 3 Container Vessels), Minerva Marine Inc. (managing 54 Oil tankers) and Minerva Gas Inc. (managing 5 LNG Carriers) have strengthened their ability to transfer data from their fleet vessels to their offices by deploying Dualog’s data transfer service Dualog Drive. With this update, all three ship management companies can now automatically send up to one million files to and from their fleet vessels every week.

The fleets of vessels managed by Minerva Marine Inc., Minerva Gas Inc. and Minerva Dry Inc. operate worldwide and as such, a fast and reliable file sharing system is considered vital to their operations.

Minerva's daily data exchange needs include software distribution to keep all onboard systems up-to-date; shore-to-vessel Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) database synchronisation and the ability to distribute large training video, together with having prompt access to other types of data such as videos from CCTV onboard, VDR and ECDIS Playback data.

Ilias Vlachogiannis, Head of Fleet ICT at Minerva Marine Inc., said: “Our fleet's data flow capability required more control as it was difficult to manage and troubleshoot, with multiple manual processes both onboard and in the offices. Large files transfers were often facing interruptions making difficult their delivery on time due to connection issues. These were the key reasons we began exploring alternatives for data transfer within our fleet.”

Minerva has been using Dualog’s maritime email service for a year, and being familiar with its environment, was able to easily adopt a new file transfer tool into its fleet. Dualog developed Dualog Drive in collaboration with vessel IT teams worldwide, ensuring it seamlessly integrates into the data flow of any fleet.

Eftihia Benaki, ICT Manager at Minerva Marine Inc., commented on the first results coming through: “We saved dozens of man-hours per month due to the process being automated. Configuring and troubleshooting have become much easier because we can see all fleet transfers in one interface. We have also reduced our manual work significantly, and I believe we can still do more.”

“Because of the Dualog technology, we can transfer large files without worrying about interruptions, and we know that all files will be delivered on time. It feels like we’re always online,” stressed Ilias Vlachogiannis.

Kyriakos Papapolydorou, Regional Manager at Dualog, added: “Our objective was to reduce the pain of manual processes of data transfer between ship and shore, while safeguarding smooth operations in diverse environments. We're glad to hear that Minerva has experienced an increase in productivity in such a short period of time.”