Software company Veson Nautical says it received a new investment from a private equity firm amid shipping's tentative steps to embrace technology.

The Boston-based firm's software automates commercial management of vessels for owners, operators and pool managers. That includes chartering, financial data, hedging and risk management, and bunkering.

Chief executive John Veson declined to say how much middle-market private equity shop Pamlico Capital invested in the Veson, which was founded in 2003. The ownership stake Pamlico was also undisclosed, but the new capital is a "growth investment."

He says his company's product is in use with some 250 owners and operators, split roughly in half between dry and liquid cargoes. He says the companies software handles about $3bn worth of cargo transactions and a similar amount of bunker transations.

He estimates that Veson's product, along with other software offerings from Softmar, Dataloy, and ShipNet, have penetrated just about 40% of the potential market, "so there's a lot of greenfield opportunity."

'Last mover' in technology

The investment from Pamlico Capital comes as owners and charterers look at new ways to automate the industry.

Maersk teamed up with Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba to book container space directly on boxships. Mining giant BHP Billiton introduced an online auction system for owners and operators to bid on cargoes.

CEO Veson says shipping is a "last mover in technology," but that is an advantage as the industry can now take advantage of the most recent developments such as Web-based computing and natural language processing.

As an example, Veson says his company has software that can parse broker reports for position lists in order to allow commercial managers to build a searchable record of voyage information.

Veson's software is also being used by an oil major and a tanker owner to communicate directly on vessel performance, port congestion and automate other tasks that may be handled on the ground by ship agents.

Veson says such automation will be even more necessary as larger fleets and commercial pools chase a still limited supply of cargoes.

"As margins get tighter and competition increases, the next generation of shipowners realise they need to better leverage their tonnage."