Clarksons-owned digital fixture platform Sea/ has big plans following its takeover of Swedish freight contract management platform Chinsay.
And chief executive Peter Schroder said the backing of the UK-listed shipbroking giant is a big help.
“I came from Maersk Tankers and I’ve heard the argument, ‘oh, it’s Clarksons doing this and that’, and I say we have 459 other broking houses on the platform. It doesn’t seem to be a barrier that it’s Clarksons,” Schroder told TradeWinds.
“It is very strong to have an owner that wants to invest into this space and can help to facilitate dialogues for us because we are an independent legal entity doing our own business, and building that on a standalone basis. That’s the journey that we’re on.”
Sea/ does not employ shipbrokers.
“We don’t need them to develop the intelligent marketplace, but of course we need to listen to our users,” Schroder said.
“That’s a core driver for us, understanding the use-case for charterers, brokers and owners, where they meet and what they need from a digitalisation perspective to facilitate a seamless workflow where you can get more transactions done quicker and better on our platform.”
Schroder said there are always challenges ahead in building an intelligent marketplace for the industry.
‘Pain points’
He told TradeWinds that these include “really understanding the pain points of all the users, and turning that into an effective software solution”.
“We aspire to having the intelligent marketplace for freight, but we don’t have it yet,” Schroder said. “We started out with iron ore; we have 65% of all iron ore being contracted on our platform.
“We are moving well ahead, but we have to move into coal, grains and wet products also in the coming quarters — that’s not an easy task,” he said.
Schroder explained that container ships can use elements of the platform but the core focus is on dry bulk and tankers.
The Sea/ boss was previously chief digital officer at Denmark’s Maersk Tankers, driving a transformation of that company.
“I took a lot of the experiences of a shipowner/operator perspective with me and a deep understanding of digitalisation in the shipping industry, and all the software tools that are out there,” he said.
Schroder has a pure commercial background, but always with technology at the core.
He was approached by Clarksons about the new role and joined in April.
The executive spent four years at Maersk Tankers, and was instrumental in creating vessel optimisation platform ZeroNorth, as well as being involved in the launch of VesselTruth and the cooperation with CargoMetrics to develop data-driven, evidence-based chartering and fleet allocation signals.
