Have you ever been inside an oceanarium? Those small cities for underwater creatures with a territory similar to a football stadium? One of the biggest oceanariums in the world is filled with ten million liters of water. That is the exact volume of fuel consumed by an average cargo vessel per year — 85 000 tons of heavy fuel oil.
It adds up to 60 000 tons of CO2 emission per year and 21 million US dollars in fuel costs. That is a lot and many people are now aware that those numbers need to be reduced rather sooner than later — for economical and ecological reasons.
A smart route can save up to five percent of the fuel
Ivan and his team at Marine Digital have a plan for that: The fuel consumption of vessels is affected by a lot of factors like weather, currents, the technical state of a ship, ocean salinity, and varying draft. Even an experienced shipmaster has a difficult time to combine all of those factors on the fly to calculate the most efficient route.
In 2019, Ivan founded the Riga-based start-up together with a team of industry professionals from banking, logistics and IT to build a digital solution that helps shipping companies to save up to five percent in fuel consumption: by better navigation planning and smart weather forecasts.
The goal: to revive competition with an innovative spirit
„There are many large companies developing digital solutions for shipowners and vessel engine producers, but they lack the technical knowledge and innovative spirit of a startup like us“, says Ivan. „With our technology, we want to revive the competition and drive the digitalization of the logistics industry.“
Ivan and the Marine Digital team now joined APX to have a strong partner at their side when introducing the technology to the German market and growing their business. But they are committed to keeping up the start-up spirit: „We don’t want to be the next Microsoft“, he says. „We’re focused on building a scalable solution for the industry to help them transport goods more efficiently, economically, and environmentally friendly. At last, it’s going to help the whole economy.“
Source: medium.com/apxberlin
