Royal Wagenborg renews contract with Castor Marine
Royal Wagenborg renewed and extended Castor Marine’s Global Ku VSAT connection for multiple years.
Since 1898 the Dutch family-owned shipping company has been crossing the oceans, evolving to a fleet operator with about 200 vessels. Besides the extension of 52 Global Ku VSAT contracts, Castor Marine will equip an additional 15 Wagenborg vessels, currently on 4G, with VSAT.
For more than eight years the company has provided VSAT, Iridium, Inmarsat FBB, and IT services to the Wagenborg fleet. To support Wagenborg’s strategy of smart shipping and being able to operate the global fleet more efficient and environmentally friendly, the bandwidth for the 52 vessels has been increased. This will also improve the onboard crew welfare system, as provided by Castor Marine for several years.
Wagenborg vessels trading in Europe will be equipped with a ‘Telenor Ka system based on iDirect and Intellian v60 Ka VSAT hardware’. These vessels currently use a 4G system and an L-band back-up system when sailing outside 4G coverage. To improve the crew welfare and support smart vessel operations 24/7 anywhere at sea, these vessels will also be provided with VSAT connections. The first installation was done in October 2021 and over 15 vessels will follow shortly
Castor Marine supports and manages Wagenborg’s SD-WAN routers centrally, which is ideal for monitoring, performing changes and software upgrades. In the SD-WAN setup for Wagenborg Shipping, all the business applications on the fleet are directly connected to Wagenborg’s headquarters in Delfzijl, the Netherlands. The crew welfare network operates separate from the business network and is directly connected to the public internet, after passing Castor Marine’s content filters and firewalls.