Magnuss

06/13/22 • 38 min

Hoisting the sail, a supply chain podcast

In today’s episode, we are delighted to host James Rhodes, the Chairman, CEO, and Co-founder of Magnuss, a maritime technology firm. Rhodes brings over 30 years of experience in maritime shipping, renewable energy, investment banking, and management consulting. Magnuss delivers onboard systems that reduce fuel consumption and emissions for today's global shipping fleet. Rhodes joins us to talk about a technology called the Magnuss VOSSTM which stands for Vertically-variable Ocean Sail System.

The Magnuss VOSS is a mechanical sail that converts wind into forwarding thrust thereby augmenting ship propulsion. Similarly to the Flettner Rotor, the Magnuss VOSS relies on the Magnus Effect, which states that a rotating cylinder in a wind stream produces a force perpendicular to the wind direction. When wind hits the rotating cylinder it sets up a high and low-pressure difference and creates thrust roughly ninety degrees to the wind direction. A vessel sailing with the wind on the beam is therefore given maximum forward thrust from the spinning VOSS.

The idea is to have the sails act as a supplement to the ship’s installed engine power. This will increase fuel economy and reduce harmful emissions by harnessing the wind.
Join us to learn about how the VOSS addresses major issues in the shipping industry, namely energy consumption and environmental impact, and the mechanisms available to help ship owners finance the retrofit.
Magnuss is running until June 28 a funds raising campaign on Start Engine.

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Blue Week, by Marin Institute

We are delighted to receive today one of the early partners of Wind Support NYC, Guilhem Gaillarde, calling from Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Next Episode

Discover Aloft

In this week's episode, we welcome Miles Keeney-Ritchie and Satchel Douglas, the founders of ALOFT. This startup champions wind propulsion and was founded in 2021. They aim to retrofit current ships with wind propulsion and optimize operations to significantly reduce shipping supply chain emissions.

Our guests are creators and well-experienced in the technical field. Satchel is a naval architect and professional engineer. He has built sailing yachts, crewed on oil tankers, and engineered retrofits for numerous commercial ships. He also recently led the integration of the largest battery-electric ferry in the world.
Miles has built mobile autonomous robots and worked in industrial process automation. He is an expert at integrating technology, with a decade of experience in mechanical design, hardware development, and project management.
Their shared passion for decarbonization and solving challenging problems gave rise to Aloft where they try to make maritime shipping cleaner and more fuel-efficient. Currently, their retrofitted vessels reduce emissions per shipment by 50 percent; however, in the future, they will be emission-free.

Michelin, among a group of 12 European cargo owners, has made a call to bid for a tender to move 1,000 TEUs weekly, from Europe to the US on wind-powered vessels that reduce CO2 emissions by 50%. This is an exciting opportunity for Aloft: Miles and Satchel will detail their bidding process with us. Tune in to hear about their proposition and future plans for making maritime shipping cleaner using wind propulsion technology.