DNV's Steel Load Planner Now Builds a Safe Cargo Plan in Five Minutes — and Runs on 100+ Ships

DNV used Posidonia to launch version 2.0 of its Steel Load Planner on 3 June, adding AI that automatically generates an optimised steel-coil loading plan, complete with structural assessment, in under five minutes. Steel coils are one of shipping's most demanding cargoes — wide variation in weight, dimensions and stowage behaviour, traditionally planned through specialist knowledge and manual calculation — and getting it wrong risks structural damage. What the AI does: the tool assesses vessel strength, identifies stronger and weaker structural areas, optimises dunnage arrangements and recommends coil placement across the hold, while keeping the ship within its structural limits. The new version also handles mixed coil stowage and non-standard tier arrangements, and can squeeze more out of existing capacity through two levers: reduced dynamic accelerations for short voyages in calmer seas, and recognition of documented coating and corrosion that allows utilisation of up to 50% of the corrosion allowance. The deployment signal: unlike a launch-day concept, this is already used across more than 100 vessels, and v2.0 extends the application beyond bulk carriers for the first time to general cargo and multi-purpose ships. Morten Løvstad, DNV Maritime's VP and global business director for bulk carriers, said operational feedback from those 100-plus vessels shaped the release, with the main customer request being to "unlock more vessel capacity while continuing to maintain the highest safety standards." Why this matters for ship managers: this is the unglamorous, high-value end of maritime AI — a narrow, well-bounded operational problem where the cargo physics are hard, the safety stakes are real, and the payoff (more cargo intake per voyage without breaching structural rules) is directly measurable. With vessel supply tight and newbuilding slots scarce, squeezing more revenue out of existing ships is exactly the kind of return managers can put a number on. It is also a useful benchmark for vendor claims: a tool with a named operator base in the hundreds and a clear before-and-after metric is what "deployed" actually looks like. [Splash247 · Digital Ship]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 7 June 2026.