In an exclusive interview to SAFETY4SEA, Veson Nautical’s Chief Commercial Officer, Russ Hubbard, highlighted that to effectively take advantage of new technology and transparency in the maritime industry, we must find ways to transform raw data into information.
He notes that data is already changing how people operate, and there’s an unabated increase in the volume of data available to market participants. The challenge will be how to sift through the exponentially increasing volumes of data to find the exact data you need relative to the decision you’re making. That’s where new technologies like machine learning and AI can come in.
SAFETY4SEA: What are the top priorities on your agenda for the next five years?
Russ Hubbard: It’s interesting to think about the next five years when even the past five quarters have been incredibly dynamic. Climate change and decarbonization are playing an increasingly large role in the maritime industry, while ongoing crises in Gaza and the Red Sea continue to disrupt global trade. Given everything going on, and the speed at which a singular event can change your operational capabilities, our priorities at Veson are around building processes and systems that allow our clients to respond with the help of data in context. For the past 15 years, Veson has been building a system of record at the core of maritime commerce. Alongside our sustained organic growth with the IMOS Platform we have recently augmented our business through a series of strategic acquisitions. In 2021 Veson acquired Oceanbolt, an innovative maritime data intelligence platform for bulk commodities, and in 2022 acquired Q88, a leading data and software solution for the maritime industry. And in 2023 we acquired both VesselsValue, a leading provider of maritime vessel valuations and market insights, and Shipfix, the collaborative data platform for the maritime and trade sectors driven by advanced AI-enabled tools.Ultimately, our aim is to become the standard platform that propels maritime commerce—from pre-fixture processes into contracting and post-fixture data—in real time through multiple data sources validated against one another and delivered in a single system.
S4S: The global economy is facing significant headwinds: disruption on supply chains, climate change, and geopolitical instability. How do you see some of the challenges playing out and how should maritime stakeholders respond?
R.H.: Some of these headwinds were predictable, while others were prompted by sudden changes and “black swan” events. Our responses to each will need to be a little different. Climate change has been coming for a long time and requires a multi-decade investment strategy involving assets with quarter-century lifecycles; it’s something you can plan out as part of your CapEx and OpEx over a multi-year budget. We also had lead time to plan for regulatory changes like EU ETS, and now we know the likelihood that it will be augmented by other frameworks—potentially regional or global—that will require their own investments in the future. Geopolitical conflict, however, can erupt at any time and at any number of hot spots around the world, creating major implications on global supply chains, crew safety, and the economy. Your risk posture and market pricing shifts dramatically in these events. Preparing for these massive, unexpected changes requires a different, more urgent level of preparation, investment, and response. Similarly, a major trade route being compromised as we recently have seen with the Baltimore bridge collapse requires a response capability augmented by robust systems that allow for dynamic decision-making.
S4S: How will the ongoing global supply chain crisis evolve in the coming years from your perspective? What is your advice to stay competitive amid these challenging times?
R.H.: I think it’s about short-term versus long-term risk planning and building out the appropriate systems and processes to stay competitive. When significant events like global pandemics happen, there can be both positive and negative impacts. The choking of the supply chain for container vessels led to a huge boom in asset prices, but now we’re seeing the fall from that. You need to try to prepare for all eventualities, both the highs and the lows. When trades were rerouted from the Red Sea, the fallout factored almost immediately into global commodity prices and freight costs. To frequently adjust and stay on top of these changes, you have to either make a material investment upfront in solutions that will allow you to make fast decisions, such as early detection systems, or have an oversized manual capability to respond once something has erupted. Otherwise you’re carrying all the risk because when something happens, it’s an all-hands-on-deck event. At Veson, we want to help industry stakeholders make better decisions in real time as they deal with these challenging events. One way we’re focused on doing this is by solving for market inefficiencies, particularly around the ability to leverage data in context. The IMOS Platform, for example, enables context-rich decision support for stakeholders by automatically considering contract requirements in chartering, operations, trading, and accounting decisions. With the contract in the system and the ability to augment contractual information with data such as port congestion, maritime stakeholders can dramatically enhance their maritime operations.
S4S: How can data and real-time information dramatically improve ship operations? What is your feedback from the market?
R.H.: We’ve seen some pretty material changes over the past two to three years with regard to how charterers and operators are using data to make more informed decisions. In the past, you had a voyage estimator to get the distance from point A to point B. Now you factor in variables like currents, weather patterns, and port congestion. Data is already changing how people operate, and I see an unabated increase in the volume of data available to market participants. The challenge will be how to turn that data into information and how to sift through the exponentially increasing volumes of data to find the exact data you need relative to the decision you’re making. That’s where new technologies like machine learning and AI can come in.
S4S: According to data from your platform, have you identified any alarming trends/ key areas that the maritime industry needs to shed its focus on?
R.H.: Decarbonization is a huge challenge to tackle, and I think it will be a decades-long effort requiring substantial investment. One area I’m cautious of getting caught up in is trends that address environmental symptoms instead of root causes. There’s new technology for scrubbing vessels and changing how we dispose of carbon, for example. These are good intermediary steps, but we can’t lose sight of the need to balance short-term wins with long-term gains. People are not just scrubbing their exhaust anymore; they’re filling it with better fuels that are going to cause less damage. We’ve really liked seeing the advancements around dual fuels and future fuels, and I think it’s a great step forward in the industry’s decarbonization efforts.
S4S: Do you believe the industry is moving in the right direction? What do you see as the defining trends driving the maritime market in the next five years?
R.H.: I think we’re moving in a positive direction overall. Industry leaders are leaning into what technology can do for them and how it can make their operations and the industry as a whole more efficient and profitable. Moving forward, I think we’ll see a bit of a paradigm shift, at least for a lot of Western companies, from letting the market guide our actions to a place of deep collaboration between industry participants. How we share information and some of the historical sources of competitive advantage are going to change. It used to be that your personal network allowed you access to a specific deal. This will always be true in some ways, but there’s going to be more and more readily available information that will change how we think about industry dynamics.
S4S: What are the next steps for the maritime industry where the challenges of digitization and decarbonization prevail?
R.H.: We’re in a transition period, one that has implications for individual participants and on the overall competitive dynamics across the industry. I think continuing to build on what we’re bringing forward in terms of collaboration and making information more readily available will be the next steps for the foreseeable future.Even if you look at making port data more accessible, that can be used to help make decisions to decongest ports, which should allow cargoes to be offloaded more effectively, which should reduce emissions and demurrage. This information-sharing can be beneficial for everyone.
S4S: What role do you see enhanced digitalization and the introduction of Big Data, Machine Learning and AI playing in the maritime sector?
R.H.: While the industry was a little slow to lean in, I think we’re accelerating now and seeing how these technologies can yield actual benefits. Typically, the journey from machine learning to AI is cumbersome, but I think the way it’s playing out in the maritime industry is through structured versus unstructured data. There has historically been a lot of unstructured data in shipping, but we’re crossing that threshold where the chasm between structured and unstructured isn’t as large as it used to be. That’s one area where I believe our team at Veson is really leading the way. This challenge is one reason we acquired Shipfix at the end of 2023. Charterers get hundreds, maybe thousands, of emails on a given day. There is no way to capture the details of every single one of them. Shipfix can parse through the unstructured data in those emails, structure it, and then combine it with other structured data in context to distill beyond the human capabilities needed to transform it into actionable information.
S4S: Is there a need to train the wider workforce on the use of data and analytics? What is your feedback from your clients?
R.H.: What’s interesting about this question is that I think it extends beyond just maritime. If you look back over the past few years, you see that a lot of companies have entered the business intelligence and analytics space. Many of them were consolidated by larger vendors who can marry small platforms with large data sets. What also seems to be happening with increasing fluidity is the transformation of massive amounts of data into relatively digestible visual formats. The increased prevalence of these interactive, visual interfaces has really changed the game when it comes to what individuals can achieve. I do think there’s an opportunity to continue educating industry participants on the importance of data validation. As we continue adapting to evolving environmental and regulatory considerations, data has become more standardized and accessible. This enhanced transparency offers amazing opportunities for organizations to harness high-integrity information in their decision-making because while reliable data is powerful, reliable data in context is transformative.
S4S: If you could change one thing in the shipping industry from your perspective, what would it be and why?
R.H.: I think the maritime industry is changing dramatically and for the most part it’s been really positive. One area where I think we could get some momentum is in the diversity of the workforce. Shipping has largely been focused on a few key industry players, but as the global economy is changing so is the face of the global workforce. Shipping, like all industries, could benefit from having broader representation from its constituents and employee base as we keep moving forward. There are always going to be new challenges to solve, and we’ll all benefit from having more ideas and perspectives at the table.
The views presented are only those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
