Turkish tech training company Maritime Trainer is reporting its strongest year of trading hitting the milestone of 30,000 seafarers trained over the last decade, driven by a spike in demand for its digital training platform.

MTR CEO Ahmet Özgür Alemdağ says the Istanbul headquartered company has now assessed and trained more than 10,000 seafarers in the last 12 months its highest ever number with 20 new clients coming on board ranging from shipping lines, ship management companies and crewing agencies including Armona, Trans Ka, İmza Marine, DFDS, Movers, Ditaş and Lucent. MTR says it now has more than 500 ships under its subscription service and is aiming to reach up to 1000 ships by the end of 2022. The company also doubled its headcount to 25 including former mariners, training desginers, software developers, and psychologists and is now on track to grow its full-time team to 40 this year.

POPULAR COURSES

Mr Alemdag said the covid pandemic has ‘supercharged’ five years of change into 18 months with a massive increase in demand for digital training at sea and onshore.  He said the most popular assessments include Maritime English powered by a voice recognition system and the Marine Right Crew Test which measures the behavioural characteristics of crew with 24 questions in eight minutes. He said MTR’s interactive Computer Based Training (CBT), mental health package and 3D animations are also proving popular as they enable companies to meet standards including the DryBMSA for the bulk sector and the Tanker Management and Self-Assessment (TMSA) programme.

“Tech is driving change,” he said. “With sophisticated training platforms like ours we can action immediate results and highly bespoke training. We are so much more than just a generic system. We follow the industry and communicate with our clients to improve our platform content. We identify pain points and develop new modules like Job Application, GDPR tracking performance appraisals. We are now planning new STCW approved and cloud simulation courses. The MTR system also works offline and it integrates easily with existing ERP platforms.We aim to make the training intuitive and immediately impactful.”

Mr Alemdag said MTR’s digital approach is giving it a real edge in the market. He pointed to its specially designed VR game training module which acts out critical operations and safety scenarios as an example of innovation.

“There are very few other systems like ours which provide such a comprehensive digital training package,” he said. “Moreover we see huge challenges on the horizon around decarbonisation, ESG, mental health combined with a ramping up of industry standards like the TMSA DryBMS  and Sire 2.0 (Ship Inspection Reporting Program). All this is making far greater demands on training and assessment providers and the need for sophisticated digital talent and competence management solutions.”

MTR will be exhibiting at Posidonia on its Greek representative Oriani’s stand at Hall 1 Stand 1415. Oriani promotes maritime digital transformation companies. Outside Greece MTR now has representation in the UK, Singapore and the USA.