Shipping tech finally has its ‘moment’ – can it get it right?

Shipping tech finally has its ‘moment’ – can it get it right?
Avatar Greg Miller 23 June 2019 https://www.freightwaves.com/news/shipping-tech-startups-have-their-mome...

Technology has evolved to the point where adoption is much harder to avoid – even for grizzled old-school ocean ship owners notoriously averse to change. Throw environmental mandates into the mix that heighten pressure to find efficiencies, and it appears the moment for maritime technology and software has finally arrived.

The Marine Money Week conference in New York on June 17-19 featured a much greater emphasis on software than in previous years; clearly, it’s no longer just about financing ships, it’s about financing ship tech as well.

According to Scott Borgerson, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of hedge fund and analytics company CargoMetrics Technologies, “There have been momentous technology disruptions in this industry before – sail to steam, the chronometer, the container, GPS – and now it’s our turn with software and the internet.

“Machine learning, cloud computing, Big Data, AWS [Amazon Web Services] – a lot of that stuff didn’t exist 10 years ago, but now it’s mature enough that [shipping] is ready to embrace change and optimization,” he continued, adding, “Angel capital and venture capital [VC] is starting to wake up to the fact that shipping is about more than just containers. It’s an exciting moment for us in our field.”

Ioannis Martinos, founder and CEO of Signal Maritime, a company that provides analytics-enhanced commercial ship management, made a similar point about ship tech’s current evolutionary stage.

“Until now, the technology has not been able to do some of the things shipping has asked it to do,” he said.

“It’s only now that we’re able to do these things. The reason autonomous cars weren’t possible 10 years ago is that the tech wasn’t there yet. Some of the problems shipping has to solve are autonomous-car-grade in terms of difficulty. I think now is the first time as an industry that we’re able to solve some of these difficult problems.”

According to Marina Hadjipateras, general partner of investment company TrailMix, “We’re at the point now where there’s no turning back. Tech is in shipping to stay, particularly with the environmental regulations. It’s just a matter of who’s going to get on the train first.”
Signal Maritime CEO Ioannis Martinos. Photo courtesy of John Galayda/Marine Money

Søren Meyer, chief asset manager of Maersk Tankers, which has a fleet of 165 vessels, emphasized that his company is not just heavily embracing new software and technological solutions to increase rates.

“A big component for us is to drive CO2 emissions down as well,” he affirmed.

The environmental imperative is also playing a role on the talent recruitment side of the equation. When a startup seeks to attract coders and engineers to a product focused on shipping – an industry they likely know nothing about – this angle resonates deeply.