Nautilus Labs spent the week of September 3-7 in Hamburg, Germany attending SMM, the international trade fair for Shipbuilding, Machinery and Marine technology. The impressive conference attracted over 50,000 visitors from more than 120 countries this year in Hamburg under sunny September skies. Kitack Lim, Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization, was in attendance. 2,289 exhibitors from 169 nations covered 13 halls and a total of 93,000 sq.m (1,001,044 sq.ft) demonstrating their products and services.
The Nautilus team was honored to take part in an evening event with Hoppe Marine, a Nautilus strategic partner, during SMM. Hoppe organized a Hamburg harbor tour aboard their fully outfitted icebreaker.
Inspired by this year’s theme “Trends in SMMart Shipping”, the biggest areas of focus from the conference were digitalization, environment, green shipping, security and defense. In their latest press release, Hamburg Messe & Congress GmbH stated that “Digitalization is one of the key drivers of the industry, along with environmental protection.” That rings true to us at Nautilus Labs as we seek to build software that embraces these trends and empowers our clients to do so as well. “SMM is a highlight in the maritime industry. It is a great opportunity to meet partners and clients as well as getting new insights on the maritime trends”, as Nautilus Lab’s CEO, Matt Heider, mentioned.
With the IMO’s impending 0.5% sulphur cap decision, efficiency and optimization were key topics among speakers and attendees alike. Finding innovative and resourceful ways to reduce fuel consumption seems to be on everyone’s minds. Morgan Stanley predicts an increase of oil prices up to $90 a barrel by 2020. Under these everpresent pressures, we’re seeing more clients approach us about exploring ways to use high frequency data and machine learning-based predictive vessel management to maximize fuel savings and vessel ROI.
Nautilus Labs is partnering with our clients to tackle some of these challenges and pressures head on. We look forward to next SMM events to see how far the industry will go and we’re excited to be back in Germany to showcase our progress and impact on the industry.
