About KH Charts

KH Charts, formerly known as the Kelvin Hughes brand is the world’s largest stockist and distributor of charts, navigational data and marine technical publications operating from six locations worldwide to provide a fast and global service.

From small beginnings at a shop in central London in the 1940s, supplying nautical paper charts and publications to ships' Captains, KH Charts pioneered the introduction of new services to make the navigators work easier, quicker and more accurate. KH Charts pioneered the use of outfit management to monitor new editions and updates of charts and publications held in a ships outfit. These new editions are then supplied directly to the vessel either automatically or on demand by the vessel. This ensures that the ship’s outfit is always up to date, compliant and legal.

KH Charts introduced the chart correction tracings for Admiralty and US charts during the 1970s. Today we supply in excess of 10,000 chart corrections per year through our high capacity chart correction service to thousands of ships worldwide.

Electronic navigational Charts have naturally evolved complement the chart management requirements for a given flag state and allow for more efficient identification, ordering, use and maintenance of a ship's outfit. KH Charts was an early provider of electronic chart support services on board ships. In the 1990s, ChartCo Limited developed and pioneered the digital distribution of chart updates, which was setup to deliver digital corrections and tracings directly to ships via satellite broadcast completing the full cycle of navigation chart use, management, update and compliance.

Today KH Charts leads the way in supporting all available official and privately produced nautical charts for commercial shipping.