Navtor’s merger-driven scale unlocks opportunities for shipping
The Norwegian tech company says its new single business entity has created a giant in the smart shipping technology niche
NAVTOR founder and CEO, Tor Svanes, says his company’s recent merger with Singapore-headquartered Voyager Worldwide, a group with heritage dating back more than 200 years, has created an entity with products and services on more than 18,000 vessels, about one third of the relevant world fleet.
“I think we took a few people by surprise,” says Svanes, commenting on the December 2023 deal that he believes launched Navtor into the smart shipping stratosphere.
“We (Navtor) were, of course, already one of the main players in both e-navigation and performance monitoring, management and optimisation, but this transformed our organisation overnight. We now want to help our customers do the same and, with the scale and strength this union delivers, we’re perfectly placed to do just that.”
Easy does it
Svanes says everything the company does is anchored by the mission of “making life easier” for users, shipping businesses and the industry in general.
In an increasingly complex maritime world defined by evolving regulations, sustainability concerns and commercial considerations, Svanes sees opportunities.
“From day one we’ve looked to innovate smart digital solutions that tackle industry pain points. These have effectively slashed administration, enhanced safety, heightened control, and delivered powerful environmental and business efficiencies for our customers. It’s an approach embedded within our DNA.”
The solutions are designed to interact and support each other within Navtor’s secure “digital ecosystem”, empowered by a constant flow of shared, high-quality, broad-based and business critical data.
The result, according to Svanes, is an integrated family of smart shipping innovations that unite ship and shore, constantly working to unlock value.
“We understand both shipping and the power of data; connecting that domain expertise through innovation can empower sustainability, in both the commercial and environmental sense.”
Real-time benefits
Navtor has the market’s leading Passage Planning module on its NavStation digital chart table (the world’s first) — automating and simplifying an otherwise demanding task — while NavFleet, an onshore “total ship operations and performance platform”, has recently been upgraded with features such as an emissions calculator, empowering both CII compliance and savings.
Digital logbooks are currently a key focus area, providing an integrated, auto-populated, standardised and valuable source of big data for ambitious shipping businesses.
“The logbooks are a neat encapsulation of how we work,” Svanes says. “They simplify tasks for crews, dragging these time-consuming, often error-prone, analogue ways of working into the present day and delivering huge potential for real-time data monitoring, operational optimisation and continually enhanced sustainability.
“This is something of which our existing customers, and now Voyager’s established user base, can really take advantage. The savings — in terms of time, money, overall business efficiency and emissions — multiply as more of our solutions roll-out and work together, across the global fleet.”
Enabling progress
The scale of Navtor’s ambitions and the impact the newly enlarged team can have on the shipping world, is emphasised in a new AI research project called GASS (Green AI for Sustainable Shipping)*. With Navtor at the fore, this three-year partnership looks to help drive the data-driven decarbonisation of the entire industry.
The concept revolves around creating AI-empowered digital twins of vessels to showcase optimal real-time fuel consumption for any ship, sailing anywhere, in any conditions. Actual vessel performance can then be addressed in line with this benchmark, resulting in the industry’s first meaningful “dynamic voyage optimisation” tool.
Svanes says the module, once complete, will be integrated into NavFleet. “We believe advanced AI algorithms can enable energy and emissions savings of around 20% per vessel. Imagine those benefits multiplied across more than 18,000 vessels.
“The fact that this is possible might catch a few (more) people by surprise, but we can do this. That’s the potential of true smart shipping,” he concludes.
* GASS is a partnership with Grieg Star, Maritime CleanTech, Scandinavian Reach Technologies, Simula Research Laboratory, SinOceanic Shipping and Sustainable Energy/Siva, with support from the Norwegian Research Council, Innovation Norway and Siva