Frank Coles, the former CEO of Transas (Acquired by Wartsila) joins Marine Digital team as strategic advisor to accelerate the startup development of the software technology focused on vessel data transparency and industry climate change mitigation targets. Marine Digital is an early stage deep-tech company supported by Technology Transfer Agency (WTSH.de), Investment Bank (IB-SH.de) of the Schleswig-Holstein state of Northern Germany, APX.vc and EU based private investors. The company is headquartered in the maritime city of Kiel. Marine Digital is a company focused on automated vessel data acquisition hardware technology and artificial intelligence algorithms for route planning targeting the vessel emission and fuel consumption reduction goals.
Frank Coles is an experienced maritime entrepreneur with a wide range expertise
Frank Coles is the former the chief executive officer of Wallem Group, a maritime services company. Before that he was chief executive of a maritime software company, Transas, now a subsidiary of Wärtsilä. Frank is a master mariner and worked at sea for 12 years, and as a maritime lawyer for 5 years. Frank then became operations director for Pacific Basin Bulk Shipping in Hong Kong. He was formerly president of Inmarsat Maritime and chief executive officer of Globe Wireless.
Frank Coles: “The Marine Digital project is unique and exciting and I am excited to be able to participate in the journey towards solving the challenge of data acquisition on board the ship and the smart use of this data. Marine Digital will challenge the status quo because none of the current solutions have quite mastered the integrated solution. Too many of the solutions available today still have too many human elements attached, Marine Digital is seeking to eliminate this. We all see the words automation, artificial intelligence, algorithms and fuel efficiency, this is the first time I have seen it mean something.”
"I believe that the experienced and ambitious technological team of Marine Digital couldn't find a better partner than Frank, who is a wise maritime expert with domain knowledge not only in the vessel operations, but also in satellite and wireless communications as well as in marine law. The process of the data acquisition hardware and AI navigation development as we believe one of the major mass market solutions supporting the climate change mitigation goals and this is a tough challenge because of its complexity - multidimensional data layers, terabytes of data sets, heavy industry surroundings of the vessel, which is by the way almost a fully metal object, so it's great to be on the same page of understanding the whole thing with Frank from the first minute." - says Ivan Ladan, CEO of Marine Digital GmbH
Marine Digital team has already formed 4 solutions that are suitable for charters, shipowners, and fleet managers of different types of vessels for:
- Weather routing and voyage optimization for managing ETA
- Real time monitoring of vessel performance
- Predictive maintenance of equipment onboard
- Reduction in fuel consumption and GHG emissions
