Maritime technology company ZeroNorth has announced the opening of two new offices, in Varna, Bulgaria, and Mumbai, India, to help expand its Professional Services offering and provide customers with unparalleled industry expertise to support vessel optimisation decisions.

The announcement is the latest development in ZeroNorth’s Professional Services offering, which is based on three major service strands; weather advisory, a voyage optimisation service, and a vessel optimisation service. The Varna and Mumbai offices, which opened at the beginning of November 2021, have already been providing these services to several ZeroNorth customers.

ZeroNorth’s seasoned experts work both proactively and reactively for owners and operators, providing consultation on a range of operational, performance and weather-related queries.

ZeroNorth’s weather advisory team supports operators as part of their current offering in Optimise. The team will notify operators and masters if weather conditions have changed or when optimisation potential on a vessel or fleet is not being realised. All recommendations will be based on maximising the revenue upsides and emissions reduction potential of ZeroNorth’s platform.

ZeroNorth also offers an additional paid service for voyage optimisation where the team can act on behalf of, and in coordination with, customer operations teams to monitor vessels and optimise voyages.

The third service offering provides vessel optimisation services including performance monitoring and will use data gathered from a vessel’s voyages to advise owners and operators on potential onboard efficiencies. For example, if an individual vessel’s fuel consumption was unexpectedly increasing, ZeroNorth could use its data to advise an owner when conducting a hull clean should be best timed to maximise vessel performance.

ZeroNorth’s Professional Services team consists of meteorologists, former master mariners and ship operators, and routing experts who combine ship to shore expertise and ensure that its customers can tap into a deep well of knowledge to support their operational decision-making.

ZeroNorth selected Varna and Mumbai to extend its reach across multiple time zones and due to the extensive talent in these areas, with many former operators and master mariners located nearby.

With decarbonisation a commercial imperative, marrying human expertise and ZeroNorth’s platform will enable owners and operators to act on voyage planning recommendations, optimisation of vessels and take advantage of the weather with a clear view of their commercial and sustainability impacts.

Søren Christian Meyer, CEO, ZeroNorth, said: “Voyage optimisation and vessel efficiency must be a priority if owners and operators are going to profitably decarbonise. I am proud to welcome our new, expert Professional Services team and further expand ZeroNorth’s global presence with today’s announcement.

“We believe our new team will enable our users to maximise how they apply our technology’s insights across their operations, increasing earnings and providing assurance that we are blending the best of human and technological expertise.”

Anders Mayntzhusen, Chief Revenue Officer, who is overseeing the new teams at ZeroNorth, said: “ZeroNorth Professional Services will enable our customers to take their operations to the next level, combining seasoned industry expertise with advanced algorithms to enable better prioritisation and implementation of decisions that improve their revenue and cut emissions.

“Today’s announcement is also exciting because it enables us to further unlock shipping’s ‘black box’ on weather routing by offering full transparency and decision support. We think this will spur greater awareness and enable more collaboration across our industry; something that is desperately needed in the fight for our sector’s decarbonised future.”