BIMCO and Hunit have launched a joint pilot project with the aim to reduce risks, cut manual workloads and modernise the way the maritime industry works with standard contracts. The pilot project will address the industry’s challenges such as rising operational demands driven by sanctions regimes, increasing safety and emissions requirements, insurer expectations for transparency and more frequent inspections, to name a few.

Today, much of this work to is still managed through PDFs, inboxes and spreadsheets which increase manual workloads and is an obstacle to the industry’s efficiency.

The joint pilot project between BIMCO, the world’s largest international shipping association and Hunit, a provider of a self-performing contract platform, will integrate Hunit’s agentic contract technology and network into BIMCO’s extensive library of standard maritime agreements. The project will apply a technology that turns standard contracts into self-managing agents, addressing efficiency and reducing risks.

To take an example, a ship approaching a Best Management Practice piracy corridor (BMP5) and facing a Port State inspection at its next call cannot today be sure that email correspondence is read in time or that co-ordination is working across time-zones. The ship’s superintendent will be checking three different systems to try to confirm that approvals, insurance coverage and payments are in place.

Embedding Hunit’s agentic contract technology in a BIMCO standard contract after it has been negotiated and finalised in SmartCon means that the agreement will record the ship’s passage plan, obtain approvals from the correct parties, run sanctions and insurance checks in the background, and verify that payments to agents are in place but on hold until release is permissioned. Audit-grade records will be logged as each step is completed, and all stakeholders see the same real-time record. The process will allow parties to control risks and increase efficiency because the vessel is managed in strict alignment with the agreed contract terms and because the operational and contractual layers work as one.

“With Hunit’s technology, we are exploring how contracts can become fully operational systems, not just passive documents,” says Grant Hunter, Chief Digital Officer at BIMCO, adding:

“This pilot project supports the development of a resilient, digitally enabled maritime industry and responds to the changing demands of today’s business environment.”

Contracts will continue to be negotiated and agreed on BIMCO’s SmartCon contract management platform. Once finalised, Hunit’s technology turns them into self-performing systems that execute their terms in the real world. Enriched with Hunit’s structured data, business logic, and AI-enhanced workflows, the contract carries out its operational lifecycle on Hunit’s regulatory-compliant distributed network.

“The pilot represents a tangible step in transforming the static legal agreements that underpin the maritime sector into active commercial infrastructure,” says Aaron Powers, CEO of Hunit.

“By partnering with BIMCO, we are enabling contracts that know and execute upon what must happen, when and by whom. That means fewer manual processes, clearer accountability and more predictable outcomes in maritime trade,” Powers says.