Maritime Professional Magazine News

Those MarineNews readers who are not familiar with Bob Kunkel, probably should be. That’s because Kunkel, President of Alternative Marine Technologies, previously served as the Federal Chairman of the Short Sea Shipping Cooperative Program under the Maritime Administration and Department of Transportation from 2003 until 2008. A past Vice President of the Connecticut Maritime Association, he is a contributing writer for Maritime Professional Magazine and of course, MarineNews.

Those MarineNews readers who are not familiar with Bob Kunkel probably should be. That’s because Kunkel, President of Alternative Marine Technologies, previously served as the Federal Chairman of the Short Sea Shipping Cooperative Program under the Maritime Administration and Department of Transportation from 2003 until 2008. He is a past Vice President of the Connecticut Maritime Association, a contributing writer for many maritime and technical trades publications, including Maritime Professional Magazine and MarineNews.

ERP systems are beasts. To be happy, they have to be well fed. Computer Aided Design/Drafting (CAD) systems are a source of the food for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems since they contain significant information regarding the plans and materials needed to construct a ship. ERP systems are data hungry. They can only be effective at planning purchasing and production as long as the beast is consuming the information that the CAD system provides. In fact, there is a direct link between the success of an ERP system and how well it is fed the information it requires to do its job.

When Admiral Robert J. Papp assumed the duties of the 24th Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard on May 25, 2010, he also served notice that it won’t be business as usual at headquarters. Papp, unlike his three immediate predecessors, apparently has no intention of setting the world on fire by instituting sweeping changes. Inside the Coast Guard, the proverbial round turn is probably good news. For maritime businesses that trudge along under the collective weight of mounting regulatory burdens, an arguably willing partner now resides in the C-suite. From Papp’s perspective, the overarching link for all of the Coast Guard’s collective missions is the maritime aspect of their service.

As Cargo, Fuel or both; LNG is emerging as the clear and clean way forward for the maritime industry. The use of LNG as a marine fuel is not new. Vessels trading cryogenic LNG have burned boil-off natural gas in steam boilers for many years as a simple solution to maintaining necessary temperatures and pressures within cargo spaces. The use of the fuel varied according to the size of the ship and a boil off rate ranging between 0.10 to 0.18 percent of the total cargo. As a result of the variable quantities…

In shipping, there’s little that one can count on from year to year. The word “change” comes to mind immediately. Another constant is a steady hand at the helm at the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (INTERTANKO), the voice of the world’s collective tanker market. So, when Joe Angelo replaced long time (10+ years) INTERTANKO stalwart Peter Swift as INTERTANKO Managing Director less than 4 months ago, industry watched closely for any changes in course. But INTERTANKO's new MD is anything but an unknown quantity and he clearly hit the ground running. In April, MarPro caught up with him at his Arlington, VA offices for a SITREP on the world of tankers.

Maritime Risk is the tight focus of the first edition of Maritime Professional magazine; the maritime industry’s newest and most exciting periodical print vehicle. That’s because MarPro – as we fondly refer to it in-house here at the New Wave media group – is set to take you and your clients places that they’ve never been before. And, although we provide the digital edition of this 64-page, information packed magazine for your preview (click here for digital edition), the print edition will also make its debut at the 2011 Connecticut Maritime Association show in Stamford, on 21 March.