Since Covid-19 burst on the global stage in early 2020 and governments elected to lock down their economies to help prevent the virus from spreading, global supply chains have been in disarray. News stories chronicled supply chain failures with articles detailing empty store shelves, cargo ships waiting offshore at key ports, shortages of railcars, trucks, drivers, port inspectors, and other key personnel that make supply chains work. Few people understood the workings of supply chains because they always worked. They were unseen, yet critical for everyday life, and they consistently delivered.

Few people understood the travel arrangements, often involving multiple transportation modes, necessary to get a product from its manufactured site thousands of miles away to a store near you. The steps necessary to get an item from a plant’s loading dock to a store shelf are often mindboggling – shipping manifests, export permits, contracts to move the item to a port, securing space on a ship, getting that ship to the correct port on time, having import approvals waiting, as well as arrangements to unload the cargo and transport it local distribution centers in place and eventually onto trucks driving it to stores. If you are moving commodities – foodstuffs, petroleum, chemicals, mining ores, etc. – there are additional requirements to satisfy such as the material’s quality complying with contractual terms while also meeting government standards.

Figuring out how to simplify the arrangements and speed up the steps and paperwork approvals necessary to make supply chains work better has become paramount. Moreover, as new supply chains evolve in response to producing more goods and commodities locally, new, and different approvals and standards must be developed. Automating these steps will reduce the time needed for goods to move along the supply chain while preventing approval and paperwork mistakes that create delays. Every day/hour/minute that is saved in the supply chain process will make people’s lives better, reduce costs, and boost manufacturer and retailer profits. A win-win solution with everyone a winner.

For this Company Spotlight, we interviewed Voyager Portal’s Co-Founder and CEO (Matthew Costello) about how they are addressing the vast inefficiencies and lack of data-driven decision-making in the maritime shipping industry. Voyager Portal is a SaaS platform helping companies reduce risk, cost, and complexity across their marine supply chain. For more information on Voyager Portal, please visit voyagerportal.com.

Background: Voyager Portal co-founders, Matthew Costello and Bret Smart, first met while they were both working in the maritime shipping industry for Stolt-Nielsen in 2011. During their time there, they both observed…. READ MORE

BunkerMetric, headquartered in Denmark, supports ship operators in finding the most efficient bunker procurement plan and improving voyage margins using sophisticated algorithms. The acquisition is part of Alfa Laval's strategy to expand its digital marine service offering and will be part of the recently acquired StormGeo, a global leader in weather intelligence software and decision support services. The closing of the acquisition is expected during the third quarter of 2022.

Related Press Release: Alfa Laval to acquire BunkerMetric

Wattics is an innovative energy management analytics and monitoring platform that allows energy and sustainability professionals to manage, monitor, and analyze energy, commodities, and related data – from a single dashboard. Wattics uses advanced software algorithms to analyze raw energy measurements and uncover anomalous energy usage in appliances, equipment, or entire buildings, enabling real-time notifications and alerts to unusual behavior and consumption trends. EnergyCAP’s acquisition of Wattics allows EnergyCAP’s platform capabilities to include advanced energy management analytics tools that provide actionable, building and device-level interval data analytics and dashboards to further support its customers in their journey to net-zero carbon emissions.

Priority Power Management, Inc. (“Priority Power”) is a leader in the energy optimization and infrastructure space, offering smart energy solutions and streamlined transitions to carbon neutrality. Affordable Gas & Electric Company, LLC (“AGE”) offers a complete suite of energy management solutions focused on energy transition and sustainability. AGE also offers community solar programs, behind the meter solar solutions, co-generation solutions, and other energy efficiency services such as lighting retrofits. This acquisition of AGE increases Priority Power’s footprint in the Midwest and bolsters Priority Power’s rapidly expanding solar development business.

Fervo Energy provides 24/7 carbon-free energy through the development of next-generation geothermal power. Fervo Energy has adapted innovations pioneered by the oil and gas industry, such as horizontal drilling and distributed fiber optic sensing, to make reservoirs of hot rock that exist beneath the earth’s surface into practical, economically viable, clean sources of energy. The new funding helps Fervo complete power plants in Nevada and Utah and evaluate new projects in California, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, and internationally.

Zitara Technologies, Inc. (Zitara) is a San Francisco based developer of cloud and embedded software to make batteries safer and more profitable for manufacturers and owners, accelerating the electrification of the economy. Zitara serves customers with large deployments of EVs, utility-scale storage assets, and low Earth orbit satellites, and faces multi-billion dollar problems with battery reliability, safety, and lifetime optimization. Zitara will use the capital from this series A round to accelerate the adoption of their industry-leading software with a near-term focus on state monitoring and safety problems faced by mobility and grid-scale customers adopting lithium iron phosphate batteries.

Energy Technology Musings

Overcoming the Unseen Challenges of Global Supply Chains