Success of the first virtual Maritime Week Africa marks the maturity of organiser Petrospot’s digital events offering for the bunker sector

Petrospot is pleased to celebrate the success of its latest edition of Maritime Week Africa, the longest-running and most popular bunkering event in the African continent.

Hosted virtually for the first time, Maritime Week Africa 2021 accrued a considerable international audience along with impressive local representation from the African region. Delegates from 24 African countries comprised more than one third of the total nations represented within the international audience across the two-day conference.

Now in its 12th year, Maritime Week Africa continues to demonstrate its strong reputation for attracting top-level speakers, bringing together the most important suppliers and buyers and highlighting the challenges and possibilities presented by the uniquely diverse African bunkering industry.

The virtual conference has garnered high praise from its delegates across the bunker industry. Speaking to his attendance of the conference, Adrian Tolson, Director and Lead at BLUE Insight, said: “For a continent whose bunkering activity is usually shrouded in mystery, the recent Petrospot Maritime Week Africa Conference lifted the veil for those who attended. The speakers and panelists are to be praised for the fact-based honesty of their presentations and the organizers for asking the difficult questions. The panel discussion on West Africa might be one of the most revealing ever for a bunkering event.  This conference remains a highlight of the “virtual era” – may it soon be over!”

Maritime Week Africa 2021 is the most recent in a programme of highly successful virtual bunker conferences produced by Petrospot throughout 2020 and 2021. Its predecessors include the Global Bunkering Summit, the Middle East Bunkering Convention, ARACON, and Maritime Week Americas.

Llewellyn Bankes-Hughes, Managing Director of Petrospot Ltd, said: “The impacts of COVID-19 have presented considerable challenges for events organisers across all industries. In spite of these obstacles, we at Petrospot are proud to have successfully navigated the transition towards digital delivery, and to have emerged as the leading provider of virtual conferencing for the bunker sector. Our virtual events continue to strengthen in engagement and popularity, and we look forward to integrating our digital offering into our traditional events calendar in the post-COVID world.”

Petrospot continues its schedule of virtual bunker events with Maritime Week Egypt, taking place on 19-20 May. Petrospot’s conference programme also covers broader areas of the maritime sector including decarbonisation, which will be the focus of the upcoming ship.energy summit on 30-31 March, and maritime security, to be explored during MarSec21+ in April.