Although new Triple-E class vessels have a theoretical capacity of 18.000 TEU, it is seldom possible to exploit all of this capacity in practice. First of all reefer (refrigerated containers) can only be placed on certain positions where there is an electric plug. Moreover, to ensure that the vessel is sea-worthy there is a number of weight, height and stability constraints.
Hence, if the vessel is only filled with very heavy containers, the full volume will not be utilized. In a similar way, if only light (e.g. empty) containers are transported, the volume will be utilized, but not the weight.
Preliminary experiments have shown, that being able to mix the cargo in an appropriate way, up to 5-10\% more containers can be freighted on board a vessel.
Having a better utilization of the vessel means that the CO2 emission per container is decreased similarly.
The project will investigate how to achieve cargo mixes that allow high utilization of the vessels. Since this problem today is solved manually by uptake managers with limited technical understanding of stowage, there is a high potential for improving these decisions by applying mathematical stowage models.