Signal, the diversified shipping services group, whose activities include commercial ship management, software development and investments, has opened up access to its online Tanker Chartering Academy for all. The free to view 10-module program has been created to explain the entire process of fixing a vessel as well as tanker operations, port disbursements and post-fixture activities. See www.thesignalgroup.com/academy for further details.

The Academy program was initially created to help the fast-growing Signal train its shipping professionals, software engineers, and data scientists to ensure that they understand the fundamentals of the tanker shipping business. It is now being made available to Signal customers, partners and the wider shipping & trading community to provide entry level knowledge.

Signal founder Ioannis Martinos said:

“Shipping companies have big digital ambitions, but to deliver on those, they need to attract and onboard talent which often has little or no exposure to our industry. How can you build and deploy helpful solutions if your technologists don’t understand the shipping business? Having struggled with this in the past, we built a program based on what really happens in the tanker chartering setting. We’ ve had great internal success with it, so we wanted to share with others.”

He added:

“Signal was founded with the vision to bring shipping and technology together.”

Over the past five years Signal has taken on over 100 technologists in London and Athens to develop its suite of digital services. The Signal Ocean platform continuously processes and combines streams of private and public data such as AIS, tonnage lists, cargo lists, vessel positions, port costs, port line-ups, emissions and freight rates.

Using advanced algorithms and AI, data is transformed into private and actionable insights on the freight market. Users can track supply, demand and rates in freight markets, optimally match vessels to cargoes, run profitability comparisons, consider CO2 emissions and use Signal’s patented technology to track and forecast vessel movements across the globe.

Tanker Chartering Academy modules:

• Tanker shipping basics
• Introduction to tanker chartering
• Tanker chartering daily routine
• Cargo selection
• Fixing negotiation
• Tanker operations ecosystem
• Tanker operations key actions
• Bunkering function
• Port cost management
• Post fixture operations