Boston-based shipping software company Veson Nautical has sealed a deal to acquire UK online pricing platform VesselsValue for an undisclosed sum in the latest chapter of maritime tech consolidation.
With a database consisting of more than 81,500 vessels, VesselsValue has been focused on acquiring, storing, and commercialising data in the form of valuations, reports, and market insights.
Founded by Richard Rivlin in 2011, the company’s maritime brand and product line will continue under the Veson umbrella, becoming part of Veson’s suite of services when the acquisition is finalised in early May.
VesselsValue’s aviation unit will be spun out into a separate, standalone company.
Commenting on the acquisition, John Veson, CEO and co-founder at Veson Nautical, said: “VesselsValue brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our organisation, and we look forward to them joining the Veson team. In addition to valuing the world’s fleet, VesselsValue has a sophisticated analytical valuation methodology which we will harness to provide our clients with deeper insights to promote sustainable commercial and operational decisions.”
Veson added that the deal will see the existing VesselsValue clients benefit from improved model updates, by incorporating information from sources within the Veson product portfolio, such as Q88 and Oceanbolt, acquired in 2022 and 2019, respectively.
Commenting on the news via LinkedIn, Dr Roar Adland from the Norwegian School of Economics, noted: “Where VesselsValue has truly made an impact is the changing of the attitude in shipping and finance that such valuations can be relied upon – and to a large extent replace the old school desktop broker valuations – certainly in the more liquid segments.”
Maritime tech consolidation is happening at a rapid clip in the opening months of 2023, something that was predicted in Splash’s annual tech forecast.
Thomas Zanzinger, CEO of Ocean Technologies Group, told Splash 2023 might be the year where maritime’s siloed nature finally gets solved.
“The big breakthroughs I see coming through this year are in bringing a hitherto disparate technology landscape together. By integrating applications and overlaying multiple data sets we will start to identify opportunities for incremental gains across operations,” Zanzinger said.
Linked to this, Olga Kadeshnikova, customer success leader at data provider Spire Maritime, was one of many people polled by Splash who argued that consolidation in the maritime tech industry in the form of more acquisitions will be a very important trend to keep an eye on in 2023.
Vessel tracking data platforms have become hot property in 2023. New York-headquartered S&P Global last month joined the race to offer clients real-time shipping data, announcing the acquisition of UK-based technology firm Tradenet, which has been the long-time developer of the Market Intelligence Network (MINT) live vessel tracking platform that S&P Global has exclusively sold for years.
In February commodities data firm Kpler acquired two well-known ship tracking brands, MarineTraffic and FleetMon.
“Consolidation in maritime technology is very much needed and something we have been vocal about for years. There are too many niche companies solving tiny parts of a big puzzle and capturing minuscule market share in the process. We believe this is about to change, and that we will see many more such mergers and acquisitions in the years to come,” commented Ronny Waage, managing partner at Singapore-based Heron Advisory.
