Publications

Santos, T.A. and Guedes Soares, C. (2017), “Methodology for ro-ro ship and fleet sizing with application to short sea shipping”, Maritime Policy and Management, Vol. 44(7), pp. 859-881

A methodology is developed for calculating the characteristics of a cargo roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ship and the fleet size required for a given short sea shipping route. The route is studied for ranges of ship speed and freight rate, for which the transportation demand, split between exports and imports, has been previously determined. The ship and required fleet size to satisfy the transportation demand (for each pair of speed and freight rate) are determined using a database of existing cargo ro-ro ships to obtain the main technical characteristics of the most suitable ship. The time charter, voyage costs and revenue are then calculated considering the technical characteristics of each ship. Fuel costs are corrected for the actual ship speed and loading condition. A number of restrictions in the transportation problem are considered leading to the exclusion of certain pairs of speed and freight rate which lead to unfeasible solutions. The maximum net profit over the period of a year is identified among the feasible pairs of speed and freight rate. This general methodology is applied to a specific route and conclusions are drawn.

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