ORIANI HELLAS is the proud representative office of Windward AI in Greece and Cyprus. After commencing our collaboration in October 2021, we are pleased to announce that within the first six months major Greek Ship Owning and Management companies have partnered with Windward AI and powered their organization enabling them to trade with confidence, both from a strategic and operational perspective.

Co-Founder and CEO of Windward, Mr. Ami Daniel, addresses below the current challenges of the Maritime Industry that Windward AI can help you overcome through its cutting-edge technologies.

A growing issue in the maritime industry is minimizing the environmental impact of shipping. How can shipowners manage their fuel consumption and carbon emissions?

The maritime shipping industry transports 90% of world trade and accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions. This number is expected to increase as maritime trade volume is projected to triple by 2050. Alternative fuel options have still not reached widespread, scalable adoption and have a long timeline for development. By coming together as an industry and combining best-in-class vessel operational data with AI and fuel consumption data, it is possible to affect the trajectory of the industry’s carbon emissions by 5%-20% on a per-voyage basis.

The Windward Data for Decarbonization Program aims to create large datasets gathered from all stakeholders in the maritime trade industry to build AI-driven models that will accurately predict the carbon emissions of any vessel voyage, help digitize noon reports for more accurate fuel consumption reporting and optimize the whole pre-fixture process – including vessel selection, contract clauses, and supply chain scheduling.

What is the #1 risk for shipowners in today’s regulatory environment?

In today’s regulatory environment, counterparty due diligence is increasingly important. Shipowners can unknowingly get involved in sanctions violations, bribery of government officials, or doing business with malicious actors and will receive significant fines whether the infraction was intentional or not. Often the damage done to a company’s reputation can cause significantly more financial damage than regulatory fines through loss of customers, revenue, and valuations. Shipowners involved in international trade need to have a comprehensive awareness of risk related to all entities they do business with to ensure reputational and regulatory safety.
Windward’s counterparty due diligence capability now enables shipowners to understand and mitigate risks associated with third parties, including customers, vendors, employees, contractors, and others with a greater focus on sanctions, watchlists, adverse media, and politically exposed persons. Organizations are increasingly making decisions not only for legal reasons but for ESG considerations or “moral sanctions” as well, which have significant implications on a company’s reputation and customer and employee retention.

In light of the recent Russia/Ukraine conflict how should shipowners conduct business in this tumultuous landscape?

The conflict had massive implications on the maritime industry, in a matter of weeks sanctions were put on many Russian entities and vessels. Many companies went beyond the required regulations and placed their own “moral sanctions” on Russian-affiliated companies as well. In the immediate aftermath we crunched the data and saw an uptick in dark activity and ship-to-ship meetings by Russian-affiliated vessels – clear indications that some Russian entities are trying to conceal their identities to continue business as usual. .
Moving forward, shipowners should thoroughly investigate those who they conduct business with, not only the immediate maritime ownership entities, but also non-maritime entities that are connected further down the supply chain. To do so, they need to invest in tech-fortified resilience so they can be prepared for any eventuality, be it ever-evolving sanctions or a global pandemic that impacts the supply chain. The power of big data and AI can help shipowners make informed go/no-go decisions in a matter of minutes. But the best-in-class technology goes well beyond maritime compliance and safety, it also allows shipowners to digitalize their business for operational readiness and future forward decisions.

Source: Hellenic Shipping News