In shipping, timing is everything. A vessel sitting idle helps no one, and even small adjustments in speed can make the difference between meeting a laycan, securing an extra voyage, or cutting fuel costs. Crews onboard already calculate speed and bunker consumption, but planners and charterers haven’t had an easy way to optimize speed for TCE, until now.
Vessel operators are already doing voyage optimisation, but as it’s done after the voyages have been fixed and confirmed, there’s a lost opportunity to also optimize commercial decisions as a result.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce Seaber’s speed optimization feature, designed to give charterers and planners instant insight into the commercial and environmental impact of speed adjustments. Instead of picking up the phone or writing long email chains with the crew, you can now see directly in Seaber what happens to voyages when speed is optimized—helping you make strategic decisions faster and with more confidence.
Why speed optimization matters
Shipping is a balancing act between time, cost, and emissions. On one hand, slow steaming reduces fuel consumption and emissions, which is often encouraged by charterers and makes sense whenever there’s no commercial downside. On the other hand, speeding up can create opportunities: fitting in an extra cargo, meeting an earlier laycan, or avoiding costly delays.
The challenge is knowing what the right decision is in each situation, and quantifying its impact. That’s exactly what our new feature enables. By simulating different speed profiles against voyage constraints it highlights whether slowing down saves money and emissions or whether speeding up increases TCE enough to justify the additional bunker cost.
How the feature works
From the Seaber voyage timeline, users can simply right-click on a voyage and choose “optimize vessel speed.” Our algorithms then calculate the optimal speed based on existing laycans, bunker consumptions, and the user’s chosen constraints.
- If the laycan is fixed, the feature will recommend the best speed to maximize TCE within those boundaries.
- If there’s flexibility, users can adjust constraints to explore whether a delay or faster pace leads to higher overall profit.
- Results are shown both in the voyage details and visualized directly on the timeline, so the impact is immediately clear in the context of the full schedule.
This functionality makes it easy to decide, for example, whether to go faster to secure a future laycan or to start slow steaming when the schedule allows, always with full visibility into TCE, bunker consumption, and emissions.
Practical use cases
Some of the common situations where the speed optimization feature shines include:
- Adjusting to changes: If the earliest discharging shifts on one voyage, you can re-optimize speed to still be on time for the next laycan.
- Incremental improvement: Even when the plan is already set, the feature can suggest small adjustments that improve TCE without disrupting the bigger picture.
- Capturing opportunities: If a market cargo appears, you can test whether speeding up allows it to fit into the schedule profitably.
- Balancing savings and sustainability: Explore whether delaying slightly cuts bunker costs and emissions with minimal commercial impact.
- Supporting claims: If a charterer requests higher speeds, you can clearly show the cost and fuel consequences, supporting a case for extra freight.
Built together with our customers
As far as we know, this feature is unique in voyage planning software. It reflects the way we work closely with our customers at Seaber: listening to their challenges and translating them into innovations that reshape how charterers manage their fleets.
Anything that can be optimized should be optimized, and with this feature, speed becomes another lever that planners can control with confidence.
About the author
I’m Amanda, Customer Success Manager at Seaber. At Seaber, I bring both logistics experience and a focus on sustainability, which I’m also pursuing academically through a Master’s degree in Sustainable Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. I’m passionate about helping charterers and shipowners not just adopt our platform, but also transform the way they plan and operate - making shipping smarter, greener, and more profitable.
