Carnival Maritime grows with more service for 37 international cruise ships
Hamburg, October 18, 2016 – Last week, Carnival Maritime, the marine service unit of Costa Group in Hamburg, announced the expansion of the services provided by the Fleet Operation Center (FOC) of Carnival Maritime onto 11 ships of P&O Cruises and the Cunard line. For Carnival Maritime, this means further growth also in other departments, explained Managing Director Lars Ljoen.
Sharing best practices and leveraging economies of scale
In total, the FOC in Hamburg is now monitoring and supporting 37 ships of the Carnival Corporation. While until summer 2016, the Center was exclusively responsible for monitoring and supporting 26 ships of the Costa Group (Costa Crociere, AIDA Cruises and Costa Asia), it is now also the first point of contact for all deviations, coordination requests and issues for the P&O and Cunard fleet. Consolidated monitoring in the FOC permits to share best practices among the vessels, leverage economies of scale to reduce costs as well as facilitate and align processes. Ljoen is confident that a growing cooperation with P&O and Cunard will have positive effects on Carnival Maritime. “With additional manpower and expertise, we will improve our speed to achieve our goal of service improvements towards brands and fleet as well as optimization of our working procedures,” he comments.
Better tactical support and professional guidance
Another announcement regarded the new Nautical Department of Carnival Maritime. Headed by Vice President Nautical Operations, Keith Dowds, its overall aim is to provide even better tactical support and professional guidance in relation to nautical operations to both fleet and brand. This enables to exploit efficient synergies and works towards the ambitious goals for consistently high level safety and professional standards at Carnival Maritime. “The main premise behind the new Nautical Operations department is that we are continuously seeking to improve and share information and best practices across the fleets. We provide extra nautical expertise also to the brands. This will give us enormous benefits, for example when it comes to the deployment of the ships, their energy efficiency and port costs,” Dowds explains.
Furthermore, the Continuous Improvement department, headed by Alexander Klingelhöfer supports achieving the ambitious goals of Carnival Maritime through close monitoring and analyses, deploying lessons learned and best practices across ships and business unit. With the advances achieved since founding the company, the challenge for the future will be to maintain the momentum by building a continuous improvement culture, setting the ground for another step change in ship management. “These advancements will offer substantial benefits, leading to unprecedented safety and efficiency in cruise ship operations,” states Klingelhöfer.
On the picture (from left to right): Keith Dowds, Marc-Dominique Tidow, Lars Ljoen, Alexander Klingelhöfer