Digital technologies are transforming many aspects of vessel operations, from voyage optimisation to performance monitoring and fuel management. In this insight, we look at how the rapid growth of digital maritime solutions has lowered barriers to entry and intensified competition in the fuel-efficiency market. Compared with traditional ship design innovations, these tools can be developed and deployed much more quickly, bringing new opportunities, but also new challenges around verifying performance claims.
Innovation in ship design and equipment follows a slow, capital-intensive path, grounded in proven concepts and constrained by long investment cycles. The journey toward alternative fuels will be equally gradual. The IMO’s recent postponement of the Net Zero Framework vote highlights the pace of this transition.
In contrast, digital solutions can be developed and deployed quickly with comparatively limited resources. Digital tools for fuel savings therefore enter the market at pace and at relatively low cost, offering strong potential returns even when the measurable impact is modest. A verified 2-3% improvement can translate into a significant ROI when achieved across a fleet, particularly given the low subscription or implementation costs.
However, this speed and accessibility also bring uneven quality. Many digital products are released with limited methodological rigour, creating a crowded marketplace where performance claims are hard to validate or compare, and where genuine innovations risk being lost among overstated promises.
The 5-10% fuel-savings promise also creates misaligned incentives. One vendor informed us that buyers often treat headline claims as a pass/fail hurdle and use any shortfall in savings or voyage-to-voyage variance as a reason to take little action. Vendors, meanwhile, are pushed to oversell while keeping systems closed, which fragments workflows and erodes trust.
According to Giampiero Soncini, Chairholder and Board Member of Oceanly, shipping remains informationally closed. In some countries, owners tend to keep good results confidential to avoid price hikes and do not disclose bad ones to protect their reputation. The silence leaves a vacuum where marketing claims flourish without independent verification.
The result is a market that optimises for marketing numbers rather than verifiable, repeatable improvements.
As Panos Theodossopoulos, CEO of Metis, noted, “We have to have a common baseline when comparing vendor to vendor approaches.”
Download ‘The 5-10% Illusion’ and explore why the maritime industry’s reliance on unverified efficiency claims is eroding trust, and discover a framework to restore measurement discipline.
