Unitor E-Commerce Procurement Goes To Sea

Unitor's 4,500 international shipping customers now have a ready made solution for e-commerce procurement available. The solution makes it possible to electronically purchase Unitor products and services from vessels at sea or from the owner's office. Unitor and SpecTec's free and independent marine procurement portal, e4marine, has now opened the industry's first vessel-based e-commerce procurement solution following trials with the Baltic ferry operator Silja Line. After evaluating the e4marine solution, Silja Line went "live" by ordering marine chemicals and refrigerant gases for its flagship, the 59,912 grt passenger RoRo Silja Europa, running between Stockholm (Sweden) and Turku (Finland) from the vessel, via e4marine, to Unitor. The order was received in the Marine alliance Customer Service Centre and processed accordingly. Silja Line has been a long-term customer of Unitor and now engineers aboard its fleet of ferries can electronically select from over 20,000 Unitor marine products and services, requesting quotations or directly issuing purchasing orders. This means that vessels operators can increase onboard purchasing efficiency, while at the same time assisting in the reduction of vessel operating costs.