Weathernews Opens Manila Operations Center

Filipino marine professionals employed to meet demand for service from the shipping industry

Weathernews Inc. announced it has established a new operations center in the Philippines in response to the shipping industry’s demand for the company’s risk communication services. The company officially kicked off operations for their voyage cost-optimizing services this month from the new Manila Operations Center with a commencement event in the City of Makati last week.

Weathernews aims to help the shipping industry reduce vessel fuel consumption while maintaining safety and punctuality for cost effective voyages. Optimum Ship Routeing (OSR) simulation models calculate the most efficient RPM for vessels while also taking into account weather and current factors to find the best yield for operators and masters, saving an average of 60MT of fuel on a container vessel voyage, and up to 20MT for dry bulk carriers. Currently, Weathernews provides route advisory service to more than 2,000 vessels worldwide. However with a shipping market in recession, demand for these services has increased, the company said.

In response, Weathernews has established the new Manila Operations Center to meet the needs of these customers. The new facility is staffed by English-speaking locals handpicked from the maritime industry in the Philippines that provides 70% of the human resources in the global shipping industry. These Filipino mariners will work in operations creating voyage planning content like maritime forecasts, suggested routes and RPM recommendations for operators and their ships. By establishing this new operations center, Weathernews expects to increase the productivity, efficiency and stability of their evolving route advisory services.

The staff of the Manila Operations Center (MOC) is comprised of experienced maritime professionals, Weathernews said. After three months of training on Weathernews’ OSR system at the company’s central global operations center in Japan, six new Filipino staff began operations from the new operations facility in their home country. Weathernews CEO Chihito Kusabiraki said, “We realized that the Philippines has human resources with high-level skills and a sense of commitment.”

The MOC will support Weathernews operations centers in Chiba (Japan), Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Oklahoma (the United States) with content that helps vessels and Operators to deliver their cargo safely and timely to any port in the world. The addition of the MOC is expected to increase capacity of Weathernews’ global network to over 2600 vessels by next Spring.

The first six Filipino staff of Weathernews’ new Manila Operations Center were introduced to customers and local partners by vice president Jiro Miyabe at the operations commencement ceremony held at the New World Makati Hotel where Captain Jiro Miyabe presented the six mariners with their staff badges.

Families of MOC staff were also in attendance at the event. Twelve-year merchant marine veteran Josue Nuda said, “I can work on land near my wife and child while applying my maritime expertise, so I’m very happy.”

The company plans to increase the staff of new Manila Operations Center to sixteen Filipino mariners by the end of the year, and also hope the establishment of the Manila Operations Center will contribute to better information to help mitigate weather risks to the country like Typhoon Yolanda that caused wide scale destruction in Philippines last year. CEO Kusabiraki added that he also looks forward to “start providing weather information to Philippine-based businesses in the near future.”