The shipping industry, characterized by its constant volatility and thin margins, compels shipowners and charterers to make timely decisions to capitalize on profit-making opportunities. “The imperative for our industry is to work smarter, not harder,” says Market Manager Philip Paulsen at Klaveness, who is part of a team revolutionizing the way market participants make decisions.

The Market Manager platform, a product of Klaveness Chartering, was developed in response to real industry challenges Klaveness itself faced. Combining extensive commercial expertise and backed by a best-in-class research team, the platform is now quickly expanding and being taken into the operations of several major operators and owners, with published names by the team so far including Lauritzen and Marubeni Corporation.

Philip Paulsen, who leads the Market Manager Team in Singapore, elaborates on the platform’s rapid development.

Pre-Vetting by Market Manager

We can no longer compare apples to apples

“The old ways of comparing apples to apples is outdated, charterers have two minutes to give you their attention and Pre-Vetting uses those two minutes to give you a complete commercial x-ray of a vessel,” explains Paulsen. The Pre-Vetting module is currently gaining the most traction with customers, with Paulsen explaining that it replaces existing systems by painting the charterer with one clear picture versus using multiple sources for the same intel.

The secret sauce

Paulsen explains that what is commercially relevant for pre-vetting a ship is what Klaveness has perfected its art form in for years, “we’re stripping out the noise, there is too much redundant data in the industry and that is time consuming for charterers. We are only looking for the insights that are both accurate and actionable, this is what we mean we say we are enabling customers to make more informed decisions.”

With data additionally fed into the platform by the world’s leading ESG (Environment, Sustainability and Governance) focused digital maritime platform RightShip, and the team constantly learning and developing from the customer feedback loop, the Pre-Vetting tool is well positioned to go from strength to strength.

Freight Optimizer by Market Manager

Your outside consultant that is not emotionally driven

The Freight Optimizer module is another cornerstone of the Market Manager platform. Designed to lower freight costs, it enables users to navigate market fluctuations strategically. By identifying the most cost-effective moments to engage in the market and advising when to defer expensive cargoes, it acts as an unbiased, data-driven consultant.

The module’s machine learning algorithms provide reliable market insights, particularly potent for short-term forecasts up to three months. Paulsen explains that the algorithms are trained on a wealth of historical data, market trends, and current market conditions, enabling them to offer predictions with a high degree of accuracy, “customers learn from our data by gaining a direct line to the algorithms developed by Klaveness Research based on our many years of domain expertise.”

Looking ahead

What is next on the horizon?

Market Manager now has its sights set on the development of a port optimization module. The new addition targets providing cargo owners with deeper insights by integrating data on vessel performance, laycan schedules, and real-time port turnaround times.

Paulsen explains that by combining this with Pre-Vetting and Freight Optimizer, the full suite will offer charterers an unprecedented level of insight for decision-making power. Asked if that might create conflicts of interest, he explains that sharing and helping the industry to progress is foundational to the Klaveness approach, “it comes down to a question of do we stick with the status quo and only seek to improve things for ourselves, or do we try to improve the standard of shipping?”

Meet the team

The Market Manager team, including Paulsen, is made up 12 individuals, each bringing a unique perspective to the table. Their varied backgrounds encompass not only shipping and chartering expertise from their tenure at Klaveness, but included diverse experiences in industrial mining, shipping journalism, and software development. Paulsen leads the team of seven in Singapore, with further teams and support functions operating for Klaveness in Oslo and Dubai.