Ships making calls at the largest port in the Nordic countries can now notify the relevant authorities through a new platform using Swedish Maritime Administration system Reportal.
It replaces Port of Gothenburg’s now redundant VTMS system.
“It makes calls more efficient and it is easier to use for our customers,” IHS Maritime was told by Jouni Lindberg, nautical project manager of the Harbour Master’s Office. “The principle is that agents and shipping companies can input all their information and we can access what we need [for] own internal system.”
Lindberg said the benefits to customers included the need for data to be entered only once, rather than into separate systems, as was the case before.
Ultimately the Swedish Maritime Administration, Swedish Customs, Swedish Transport Agency and the Swedish Coast Guard will all have access to a ship’s call information, but not all are connected yet. Lindberg said, “The second advantage is that everybody uses the same data, such as ETA and ETD, for example, so instead of having their own systems, it’s now available on this maritime single window platform.”
Reportal is available for all Swedish ports, but Gothenburg is the first to be connected. The driving force behind its development was EU Directive 1010/65/EU, which aims to simplify and harmonise maritime administrative procedures, ease bureaucratic procedures and make the management of ship calls easier for industry and public agencies.
The introduction at the start of this month was not all plain sailing, however. The planned for shutdown of six hours to effect the changeover stretched to 12, making the port ‘blind’ for a time. “But we were prepared for this and now it’s working smoothly,” said Lindberg, “It’s a win-win situation for everybody I think.”
This post was sourced from IHS Maritime 360: View the original article here.
