Mintra, a leading supplier of digital learning and human capital management (HCM) software to safety-critical industries, plans to further expand its presence in Asia after appointing Singapore-based The Work Shop Pte Ltd to support its maritime sales strategy in the region.

The Work Shop is a specialist maritime training and engineering consultancy founded by three mariners who share decades of industry experience. Headed up by director Adrian Piu – a highly respected figure in southeast Asia’s maritime community – the company will act as a local partner on an exclusive basis.

The team will focus on selling Mintra’s learning and competency management system Trainingportal – also available in an offline solution to address the connectivity issues experienced while at sea – along with eLearning from the company’s recently expanded maritime-specific course library.

The number of titles has more than doubled from 107 to 238 to create a holistic eLearning library which, when used with Mintra’s market-leading technology, offers a viable, low carbon and cost-efficient complete digital learning solution.

Raju Venkat, international sales director for Mintra, said: “This partnership puts Mintra in a prime position to respond to the workforce planning and mobilisation needs of Asia’s maritime operators in a post-pandemic world.

“With a shift away from traditional classroom models, an ability to rapidly deploy cost-effective training to seafarers without resource-intensive logistics and training facilities will be critical to success.

“Minta has an extensive track record of helping the maritime sector to address the challenges of digitalisation and with the help of the team at The Work Shop, we look forward to demonstrating how we can support operators across southeast Asia on their journey to a digital future.”

Adrian Pwi, director of The Work Shop, added: “As Mintra’s partner, we are excited to offer their state-of-the-art products and services to our customers here in Asia, giving them access to on-demand digital learning and human capital management software built for safety-critical industries.”

The new courses represent over 66 hours of additional maritime learning content and cover a wide range of safety, regulatory, operational and technical subjects, broken down into rank and job role from deck officers to galley staff. There are also a number of soft skills courses – abilities which are growing in demand given smaller crews and increased automation.

Learning content creation is a partnership between a carefully selected team of industry subject matter experts (SMEs) and Mintra’s instructional designers. The SMEs, all with hands-on experience from marine electrical engineers to deck officers, create the course content and script in reference to both the latest industry standards and their extensive knowledge.

A number of courses in the library have been STCW-accredited by the Norwegian Maritime Authority (NMA), and several are also accredited by certification body DNV. As a company, Mintra is a DNV Approved Maritime Training Provider, has management systems approved by Bureau Veritas and is accredited by organisations including ECITB, OPITO, CPD and RoSPA.