Maritime Accelerator cohort announced

The maritime & ports sector is the gateway to some of the biggest challenges facing the world today, and presents innovation opportunities to deliver sustainable, equitable growth for our communities and economies.

Today we announce the cohort for the Maritime Accelerator, a brand-new, challenge-led programme powered by Connected Places Catapult and supported by several industry and academic partners. Its aim is to provide each of the selected SMEs with a programme tailored to their specific needs to help them maximise their commercial engagement. This will include modules focusing on investment readiness, business modelling, customer profiling, and enterprise selling.

The accelerator is supported by several industry and academic partners who took an active role in defining programme challenge areas: data, infrastructure and decarbonisation. They also took part in the cohort selection process, ensuring the programme focuses on significant sector challenges and de-risking innovation in the marketplace.

Our strategic programme partners are:

• DP World
• National Oceanography Centre
• National Shipbuilding Office
• Port of Tyne
• Serco
• University of Plymouth

Discover the SMEs selected for the Maritime Accelerator:

• ANT Machines is an all-electric, cabinless heavy-duty tractor that can pull any trailer or chassis with a fifth wheel. It is intended to replace conventional terminal trucks and make intralogistics more environmentally friendly and efficient. ANT solves the problems of driver shortage, compliance with ESG strategy and cost efficiency in logistics operations.
• BunkerTrace reinvents the business of fuel by bringing total clarity to the origin and verification of bunker fuel, providing the maritime industry with quality assurance and sustainability reporting from well-to-wake.
• Chrome Angel Solutions uses Serious Games technology to tackle the very toughest ‘hard to teach’ and ‘hard to reach’ performance, safety & customer experience challenges for asset intensive operations with rapidly scalable low-cost simulations that are deployed through app stores on mobile devices, tablets, PC & VR headsets.
• Ecomar Propulsion researches, designs and manufactures high performance, innovative clean marine propulsion systems. With zero emission electric and hybrid hydrogen inboard and outboard motors Ecomar Propulsion aim to reduce maritime GHGs by 10 million tonnes within 10 years. Made in the UK, all products are carbon audited, 94% recyclable and sustainable by design.
• Ensemble Analytics provides customised workforce planning software, utilising AI and statistics to optimise operative allocation, training and hiring processes.
• JET Connectivity provides resilient 5G connectivity at sea with their networks hosted on their floating buoy platforms. High-speed, reliable connectivity at sea saves lives, protects our environment, and ensures stable growth of a global blue economy and digital ocean.
• OceanWise provides applications, services and tools that enable safer and smarter management of marine operations; OceanWise specialise in marine environmental monitoring, marine mapping and are experts in marine data management. Their Port-Log Online Environmental Monitoring Display system will be expanded to include display of forecast data to support decision making.
• Signal Intelligence is a maritime first technology start-up utilising system agnostic IoT devices to mitigate risk and decarbonise vessel operations. Signal Intelligence builds predictive maintenance solutions that anticipate mechanical failure and provide owners, operators, and crew with the information they need to act before the event occurs rather than after.
• Spot Ship is a SaaS company that is bringing shipbroking into the 21st century. Spot Ship make use of AI to cut the process from 6-man days to just two hours. Optimisation of ship selection will save the industry $25bn and the planet 90Mt of CO2.
• Zizo is a data and analytics specialist software provider and consultancy, delivering solutions for data engineering, data science, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Zizo enables organisations of any scale to work with its data effectively to drive improved performance and increased efficiencies. By allowing fast access to data, combined with an extremely flexible architecture, Zizo can drastically reduce the time it takes to get the correct information to the right person at the right time. In addition, its open platform allows users to experiment and enrich it with external data sources then share its ideas. This is all delivered through its iterative approach; combining hands-on consulting, unique technology platform and a deep understanding of the technical, commercial and legal requirements for using data.

Over the next five months, the cohort will receive business development, investment readiness and technical support from Connected Places Catapult along with expertise from the programme partners and opportunity to explore trials with them where applicable. The programme will culminate with a Showcase Event in early March 2023.