Voyage Charter Optimization

Voyage charter optimization is the algorithmic matching of cargoes to ships and the selection of voyage routing, speed, and bunkering to maximize time-charter-equivalent (TCE) earnings on a voyage-charter fixture. It weighs freight rate, distance, port and canal costs, bunker price and consumption, demurrage exposure, and ballast leg against the available fleet, often as a mixed-integer optimization over a cargo book. The objective is TCE = (freight revenue minus voyage costs) divided by voyage days; optimization tools and increasingly machine-learning engines run the combinatorics that a chartering desk once sized by hand.