Nicholas Georgiou-led Lomar Shipping plans to diversify by teaming up with deep-tech maritime start-ups.
The new operation — lomarlabs — will provide support and funding to early-stage tech companies in the maritime sector.
The company is led by former Lomar technical director Stylianos Papageorgiou, who has been appointed managing director.
Initial projects will focus on energy efficiency, fuel transition, carbon capture and removal, and automation.
Papageorgiou said the new company would “catalyse the deployment of deep technologies into everyday shipping operations”.
“We are excited to soon announce the projects we’ve been working on over the past few months,” he said.
The formation of lomarlabs marks a further diversification for the shipping division of the George Logothetis-led Libra Group.
The UK-based company runs a fleet of around 40 container ships, bulkers and chemical and product tankers.
But it has continued to move away from its former mainstay business in the container shipping sector.
In recent weeks, the tonnage provider is understood to have sold the 1,089-teu Michelangelo Trader (built 2004) and 2,872-teu Windermere (built 2010).
The two sales would take to 51 the number of vessels that Lomar has sold for around $1.5bn since the second quarter of 2020.
Among other things, Lomar has reinvested those proceeds in a $160m purchase of Bremen-based chemical product tanker company Carl Buttner in October last year.
The diversification into the tech sector takes those moves further as the company seeks to help start-ups and established companies.
Papageorgiou said that includes making Lomar's fleet of vessels available as “floating labs”.
The company will also provide “the catalytic funding a company may need to test their solution or overcome marketing hurdles”.
Lomar chief executive Nicholas Georgiou said this will help the maritime sector to “commit to a greener policy for the future and aid in the decarbonisation of our industry”.
“One of the biggest challenges that maritime technology companies face is access to the physical infrastructure of vessels and shipyards, to test and fine-tune their creative innovations,” he said.
“The maritime assets of Lomar and our wider Libra Group means we can provide that infrastructure, experience and expertise to help shape solutions that will make a real difference.”
