Companies of all sizes — including brands like GeorgiaPacific, Made.com, Bombas and Tacha — use Flexport technology to move more than $10bn of merchandise across 112 countries every year

Unseenlabs launched the company’s second and third maritime geolocation nano-satellites in November last year. The first went into orbit in 2019.

The company, based in Seattle, was formed in 2015 and first targeted fishing vessels, then tug boats. It has since expanded its offering to tankers, bulkers and ro-ro vessels

Innovation is gaining pace, though the challenges of changing a conservative industry are still great. There is room in the market for those with the right idea and the patience to see it through 

Signal began as a shipmanagement company ‘with a twist’ but rapidly established its own platform to harness data and promote better commercial decision-making in the charter markets. It is also supporting innovation through backing other start-ups and entrepreneurs

The "seafarer scalper-like" model in China's traditional crewing business has led Mr Mi to create his start-up, aiming to digitalise the service and reduce job-hunting and training costs for seafarers. And he is seeing the latent opportunities, with growing users and data on his digital platform

For all the talk of pace and accelerated digital change, technology development and integration is taking place alongside behavioural change towards digitalisation