The history of Burmester & Vogel (B&V) began in Hamburg in 1983 when Wieland Burmester and Andreas Vogel were introduced by a shipbroker to Alfred C. Toepfer International – now part of ADM, one of the world’s largest grain traders – and tasked with the challenge of building a fast, flexible, and accurate laytime calculator. Over the span of 40 years, more than 1,000 charterers and shipowners in 100 countries have used B&V to calculate laytime for millions of voyages. Bought out in 2019 and moved to Boston by Evangelos Efstathiou, B&V’s mission today is to transform demurrage from an unpredictable and manual, time-consuming process to a fast, efficient and digitally-enabled process and delegates attending Geneva Dry will be able to see how the team does this first hand with plenty of demos at its exhibition stand.
Prior to taking over B&V, Efstathiou, a graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Tech, held executive positions at Marsoft, Veson Nautical, SpecTec and Chinsay.
In discussions with clients, the three most comment requests Efstathiou hears center on harnessing data, utilising artificial intelligence and sorting through the myriad decarbonisation and digitalisation tools.
“Owners and charterers are rightly skeptical of the ROI of any tech outlay,” Efstathiou says. “When it comes to tech, owners are not dinosaurs; rather they recognise the need to validate the business case and adopt technology methodically.”
On top of the cost of a software subscription or licence, it is easy to overlook the cost of change management, Efstathiou explains, as the benefits of an investment can be wiped out by a single mistake or failure to fully embrace new tools in the way the organisation intends to use them.
Geneva Dry will kick off on May 2 with an hour on digital efficiency drivers with top names from Oldendorff Carriers and Cetus Maritime among the speakers followed by a workshop on making data actionable and finishing with what promises to be a lively debate on the future of fixing, moderated by Mandarin Shipping’s Tim Huxley with well known names from the likes of Bahri, Lauritzen Bulkers and Arrow as panellists.
“The Geneva Dry event is the first of its kind to bring together dry bulk stakeholders and service providers in Switzerland at this scale,” Efstathiou says, adding: “It is no surprise to me that more than twice as many people will be attending Geneva Dry as originally expected given the quality of charterers, shipowners, shipbrokers and technology providers attending and speaking at the conference over the two days.”
Designed to be the annual global summit for the dry bulk shipping community, the event now boasts an extraordinary mix of shipowners, trading companies, miners and tech providers, with more than 150 companies due to convene at the Hotel President Wilson on the shores of Lake Geneva.
The high-level summit is split into relevant sectors to make delegates’ time more targeted and rewarding. Sessions also include minor bulks; agri-commodities; coal; iron ore; and decarbonisation.
The full Geneva Dry agenda can be accessed here.
Geneva Dry registration, at just $780, can be accessed here.
