Remembering a Champion of Seafarer Rights, Software Changes Class & Mission-led Funds

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to Undocked for another week. Hello, Rha Harris, how are you? Hello Nick Job. Yeah, I'm doing good. I'm doing alright. Yeah, so it's a Tuesday here. It's kind of misty and sort of a bit. I like your weekly weather report. It doesn't offer me any into the edit, but I always get a weather report from Rha'ala at the beginning. Yeah, definitely take it out, no one cares. So what's been catching you Rha'ala this week? Well, obviously, micro-updates on the Iran war situation and the sort of various little changing sort of elements of that. We'll try and do our best to kind of demystify, I guess. The things I notice really, I guess big takeaway, no real sign of de-escalation. 11 merchant ships have been hit since the start of the conflict from the very north of the Persian Gulf. Off-Q-8 down to the Gulf of Amman, which is obviously very, very concerning. An attacks from shipping might come from the Iranian coast. I think they continue to operate a large number of small attack boats as well, coupled with an extensive inventory of missiles and drones and so on. And also as well read something quite concerning that the use of limpyp mines cannot be ruled out as they have been used in previous Iranian attacks as well. So huge number of reasons for ships to be operating at the kind of security levels we talked about last week and being very alert to dangers. The threat level is set to critical, which I was very worried to read basically means an attack is almost certain. So, you know, that's how bad things are there. So our thoughts, obviously, with all of the the sea froze there, I'm getting mixed reports on number of casualties. But certainly there have been some, I think, four reported again since the one that was reported last week. So, you know, it's an awful situation. And we do really feel for everybody that's there and in region. But as we said last week as well, the knock-ons are far wider than just those that are in the area as well. We talked about sea ferramid mobility last week. We said we thought this would be one of the things that would be an issue that Middle East being such a big hub places like Dubai and so on. Being big transfer hubs, lots of flights break there as we've seen. And the prices are being talked around for crew travel four to five hundred percent up. So, you know, people are making money. We did say that some people will be making money here. But I mean, obviously some, you know, supply and demand, but there's also a huge amount of disruption. You know, so these are the kind of knock-on effects that we're seeing. And obviously people wanting to get sea ferras home and get them out of those regions as well, not just to kind of do, to facilitate crew change and things like that. So, huge, huge kind of disruption that we're seeing there. I think one of the things that's good in a sense is that shipping is in the news. Today's episode is brought to you by Fartek. In marine environments, power variability and efficiency are critical. Fartek's N-line panel mount glass monitors are built for operational stability across diverse vessel setups. By default, the units run on 12 volt DC with a 115 to 230 volt AC power supply. They can also be upgraded to accept a wider 9 to 36 volt DC input with galvanic isolation for greater compatibility. Fartek's displays include EMC filtering in line with IEC 60945, ensuring safe and compliant operation. Combine this with robust engineering, DNV approval and global trust from ship owners, and you have a display platform built for real world reliability. Their team of technology specialists helps ensure smooth integration from video input matching to life cycle planning and support. Whether you're specifying systems for new build or retrofits, Fartek delivers marine monitors that enhance performance while reducing risk. Is it the full product range at Fartek UK? There was that fantastic piece I shared with you Nick. It was in the Guardian. I'm sure it's still up there if you want to see it. I think what I liked about that piece is it was really putting you in the shoes of a seafarer, which I think we tried to do last week, but we sort of went quite technical, didn't we? Just talking about all the different elements, but that article sort of really brought it home to you, stood on the deck and watching the unthings unfold from there. We should put it in the show notes because it's a really good article, but what's interesting about that to me is I think this is the first maritime crisis for one of a better term where lower thought but satellites have existed and see for as a access to the internet and can share on social media their experiences. They can speak to reporters from the Guardian or any other publication. It kind of reminds me of, you know, they're going back to the early 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan of soldiers being able to share their experiences much more fluidly than they used to. And people getting a real picture of what life is like on the ground, even if you wind back to COVID, where seafarers got trapped many for months and some even for, you know, for a year plus. The ability to share those stories with the world just just wasn't there. And so actually we've kind of reached a new frontier of of seafarer communication, which has been really fascinating to watch and I'm pleased really pleased to see mainstream media kind of picking up on that kind of human interest part of it because I think it's super important. Yeah, I thought I missed everything else going on the fact that they certainly zoomed in and who knows how that article came to be it may be that a seafarer actually integrated that or it could be somebody meeting someone from the shipping industry and who knows but I think it's great to see that they're looking at that dimension putting the seafarers voice into that because because I think what it brought home to me and there was some footage also I saw online like you were saying it with the ability to kind of get connected. To kind of get connectivity to get clips out there and it was a sick from seafarer view on I'm guessing it would have been the bridge wing because they had the camera there rather than the deck but it looked like the deck but the but they were watching, you know, those war planes going over and yeah, you know like as we said last week these are big, big vessels but they're very, very vulnerable carrying explosive materials oil all that sort of thing so to see that and to see that from a seafarers point of view really brought that home to me along with that article as well and less edifying stories elsewhere I read in trade winds Donald Trump famous for his bravery telling shipping that it it should show some guts and drive ships through the golf which got my back up and it probably did lots of other people as well but I'm not sure that ship owners will need need huge incentives on top of what they've already got from a market perspective we talked about this last week the spike was record record ever supposed it 420,000 dollars a day I don't think this has been published anywhere but I've been told privately by by people that the rates have gone as high as 600,000 per day for a VLCC on a spot. Wow, well that's pretty breathtaking I think when you look at the main trade route from Middle East out to China I think it's called the TD 3C route I'm not very good on these things but I think it's the one to watch really whatever's happening there tends to drive markets for crude oil this is for the biggest crude oil shipping lane I think it is so when that you know when that's a high point it has knock on all over the market and yeah I'm sure that the figure I was creating not as dramatic as the one that you've seen but 420 a day peak I think the oil price has gone down a little bit from a peak of 120 dollars a barrel but when you look at that if you're talking about that kind of 420 a day and you're looking at that particular route I think it's around about 45 days so that's one voyage is about 18 million I think that's right isn't it about 18 million yeah now look at the should say not profit because you've got up X in there's probably I don't know 4500 a day and then bunker costs on top probably 45 long voyage big ships I don't know 2 2 2 and a half million of that will be in in bunkers and pork costs and all that sort of stuff but it's still a sizeable amount of money right it's worth saying that until a few weeks ago you could buy a VLCC carrier for about 50 million us so you know you're near enough talking about the the ship being sort of paid off in 12 months for a ship that might last you know another another 10 to 15 years so yeah so the market economics have gone a little bit mad yeah and I think a lot of people looking at this don't follow this side of shipping you know probably scratching the heads a little bit like why is supply and demand so you know how can this kind of happen I think as a few things just to make you aware of normally it's almost that capacity anyway so it doesn't take much to kind of knock it back basically small changes in what availability can shift markets and of course this is availability in terms of ships not going there or ships being stuck there but also as well longer voyages means that ships are out of action on if they have to go on longer routes so that can change it as well and tighten the market and a lot of ships will be under long term agreed on the ship and be able to go back to the ship and get it out of the ship and make sure the ship is on the ship. agreements as well, so they may not be able to jump and win this business straight away. And I think the other thing is that the oil itself can't wait. Refineries are on this very quick turnaround. It's the whole thing is predicated on this kind of very fast changing supply chain. And on top of all of that, you mentioned buying tankers there, making a new one will take two or three years or something like that probably. And that's if the shipyard can do it, if you can find someone with capacity. Yeah, to give you some sense of scale of how big these things are, I used to run laps around the VLCCO worktop when we were at Anchorage. Seven laps was a 10 kilometer run. So it's, it's, it's, and that took me, I wasn't very fast, took me about an hour. So it's a serious bit of kit. And as you say, while it takes best ways, kind of 18 months to build, but the order books generally speaking are kind of two, three years ahead. So if you order a brand new ship today, you might get it sort of back into 2028, 2029. And so, yeah, we have a near enough, there is a fixed supply of ships in the market. And then you also need those ships to be in the right place. So if a ship is on a voyage charter, so it gets essentially hired out to move oil from one place to another, once it's finished that charter, it then sort of goes back to the ship owner and the commercial operator in the ship owner will then sort of make a judgment call, should I send the ship to the Middle East, should I send the ship to West Africa, should I send it somewhere else in the world. And then now the ship will start steaming in whatever direction that's chosen. And ideally, you will, you will find a cargo that you can, you can pick up and fix while you're on route. If you don't, if you end up not finding a cargo, then you will sort of be sat-wading at anchorage waiting for a cargo. So a lot of ships end up anchored in Fajira for weeks at a time. And again, demand fluctuates, but the actual supply is fairly static for the ships themselves. Because what taxi rank, they have to go and wait, wait it out and see. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's the thing about fixing assets as well. I mean, the other thing to bear in mind is that somebody may need you at a certain time. You may be weeks away, envoys from that. So, you know, and, and then on top of that, you've got to make sure you crew that vessel. And if you can't get crew because of all the reasons that we talked about already and the complications of that, then, then, yeah, so a lot of dimensions here. If you're interested in the commercial operations of tankers, I'd recommend you check out the interview we did with Michael Sikov. He's the CEO of Half-Neyer, the world's largest tank operator. And he actually went into detail on commercial operations, tanker pooling, you know, why it's important to have sort of ships positioned all over the world for when the right cargo has come up so you can get them at the right price. So it's a really good episode to get back to. Yeah, I think so because apart from anything else, Michael has made it an art to work with rock market. You know, this kind of, this kind of volatility in the markets that would keep most of us up at night and want to be desperate for a nice long term. You know, last term, could take them run or something like that. That's not Michael's bag. He likes to kind of, he's worked out how to succeed in that sort of ambiguity of the spot market. So yes, do check out that episode. And the last thing just to say about this as well is that there's money on the table, right? There will be a lot of people looking at this and are looking at this and saying this is a great opportunity. This is a time to really kind of make our fortunes as it were. And so, you know, there is pressure from some owners at least for people to sell through that. And a time when pressure is put on to managers, managers, certainly all of the managers that I know and work with, very much put C. Ferris first. I've never heard anything different, you know, from closed-door meeting. I've never heard anybody change direction from saying this. Absolutely. C. Ferris safety is absolutely paramount. If you look at all of the messaging from Ockim, who represent all of the energy majors in Tanka, who represent all of the tanker operators, again, the message is clear. The safety of the C. Ferris absolutely paramount. So those people will be having some difficult conversations at the moment around those owners who are looking at this with a purely commercial eye and those that are have a duty to protect and care for their C. Ferris. And at odds with Donald Trump, which is, you know, so it was an interesting place to fight to find yourself. I think if you don't find yourself at odds with Donald Trump at some point in your life, then you're probably not doing something wrong. Well, if I may, this gives me a very nice segue that we've finished there on just on that point about C. Ferris and care for C. Ferris. This is a topic that we talk about a lot, you know, and C. Ferris we've discussed and many years and on this podcast around any transformation being fundamentally about people. So I really wanted this week to spotlight somebody who has been part of some of the big transformations in our industry, particularly around crew and around crew welfare. And that's a gentleman called David D'Isley, who sadly passed away last month. Obviously, thoughts go to his family and friends first and foremost. But he was an important industry figure as well. I know privileged enough to have worked alongside him and call him a friend. And I think it's worth us really maybe digging into some of the transformation that happened and how he kind of approached that around it, the way in which, you know, C. Ferris writes the label and really around the way in which employers and employees kind of representatives coming together for the good of the industry really. So he was absolutely one of the biggest figures in that. 45 years in shipping at C and a shore as well. Really instrumental in building some of the global frameworks that govern C. Ferris welfare and employment today. And he was you respected by both the ship owners and unions as well, which is not always a given because those forces can sometimes be. Yeah, they can be in juxtaposition as well. So and I think, you know, much as an industry figure, also an amazing guy as well. I was privileged to work with him at the end of his tenure when he was leaving his role at IMEC where he'd been working on the maritime labor convention. And I'll go into some of the detail around this for people so they understand why I'm saying this is such an important contribution. He went from that role and went into being a consultant and he was a consultant to us at video tell. I remember him as being an extremely kind of sharp guy, very economical in what he had to say. He really kind of listened. He really got things very thoughtful. And, you know, and really sort of really generous with his sort of time and helping, you know, people like me, this was back right with my start of my journey to sort of understand, you know, what was going on there. So, so a great guy, you will see nothing but good words about him. I'm sure there's a really nice tribute to him from the on the ITF website. There's plenty of stuff on LinkedIn. But let's dig into some of the milestones of the career, maybe. So he was the first secretary general of IMEC, which is the International Maritime Employers Council. You know IMEC of course, Nick. It's fascinating because I didn't know David. But obviously I joined the industry in 2011. And lots of the things that you look at when you look at his sort of career profile, when the sort of post tribute post started to come out. Things that I've sort of taken for granted as sort of always being there in the Maritime Labour Convention and the work done at IMEC. So IMEC is the International Maritime Employers Council, which is a representative body of employers of seafarers. I don't actually know how many seafarers they're responsible for, but it's well into the tens of thousands, I think possibly as high as sort of 80,000 or so seafarers. And I know some of the work that IMEC has done over the years that I've followed has been really centered around the role or the ability of the seafarering profession to kind of lift people out of poverty. And so IMEC spends a lot of their time going out to places where poverty can be quite extreme and looking at how you can find a kind of next generation of seafarers that would be able to go and earn a fantastic wage that would be sort of totally transformative for their family. I've met various conferences over the years. I've met many of the seafarers who've sort of come from those backgrounds from South Africa, from the Philippines and what is provided in terms of a career structure by IMEC I think is actually quite remarkable. Yeah, I make. So I make representing the employers as you might expect. They're sort of shipping companies in various labour negotiations. That's kind of where it started from. And I think that's the thing with David. I think it was there 25 years. I think, yeah, 25 years. You mentioned Nick, the training that they do, they invest very heavily in map, the training center there in the Philippines, really pushing innovation there. They have a training fund which they're members of the team. as can access for specifically for innovation to try and push. So when you're, you know, as an individual company, if you're looking to like in the early days of VR, for example, you know, quite expensive to kind of bring in that expertise and do stuff like that, that fund is available if it's justified, you know, to sort of help with CFR training. So they do interesting things that David was really instrumental in setting up, setting the stage for them to then take on as they have. So yeah, really good organization and a proud sort of record for him to have started that. So one of the key things that they do and they still engage in today's collective bargaining agreements, for example. So they work very, very closely with the trade unions. And again, you see that as a as something throughout his career that he was able to do was able to look to be able to be, to get those people around the table, to get them focused and to get, he was a good negotiator, you know, getting good outcomes. And I saw that even, you know, when there was conflict in any of the things that we had, you know, he would cut very quickly to what was really important there and so on. So as well as IMAQ, his tenure at IMAQ, he also was deputy secretary general of the International Shipping Federation, which is ISF, is the abbreviation there, we love our abbreviations, which I think became ICS, I'm pretty sure it evolved into the ICS. And he did a lot of really important work as well while he was there. He was very active as well in training. So looking at revisions of SDCW and things like that. I'm almost certain that he was one of the people that was foundational in doing what is now the industry benchmark for English language testing, the Marlins English Language Test. - Wow. Marlins, which was spun out of the group. And so that's a test to basically see if people have a good enough standard of English to work on ships where English is the working language. I believe David was instrumental in putting all of that together as well. As well as lots of other sort of training standards. So he was a good force on that. And he worked very closely with us. I think just before, which is one of the reasons he became an advisor on the MLC, which was one of his really big achievements there, which is the Maritime Labor Convention. You mentioned there Nick that you kind of feel like you took that for granted that was always around as a young man. But really called the C-Ferris Bill of Rights. And it was a major milestone when it came in. I think, you know, what did it look at? It looks at things like employment contracts, wages, working hours hours of work and rest, the accommodation, health care, welfare protection, stuff in there around making sure people have balanced meals and different meals and meals, you know, part of their culture, all that sort of stuff. So really sort of some really foundational things that affect pretty much all of the C-Ferris in the world today and that they can rely on. And it was an important piece of legislation from a lot of angles. I think one of the key things there is the fact that there were lots and lots and lots of different little bits of legislation that all kind of existed piecemeal. And it brought it into one framework. And it's sometimes referred to as the fourth pillar of international maritime regulation. So you got so lots for sort of safety more broadly, Mar-Pole, STCW, or C-On-Training. And MLC is really like a global baseline for C-Ferra treatment and welfare really. So regardless of the flag state involved, this is something that applies to everyone. When you look back on someone's career like that who's made such a big impact in so many areas, what are the standout things that you remember in terms of how we went about creating that change? Because that's big systemic industry wide change that takes many decades to complete. And it looks like he's done it three, four times over the course of a career. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even mention, I mean, just again, because it backs up what you're saying. There was also the international bargaining forum, which I wasn't even aware of. It's predates by time and I-B-F, which is known. And again, that was really, I think that was in the late 1990s. That was established. And that's really about a collective bargaining framework for C-Ferra, especially set fair treatment and stuff like that. So it had a ship owner representation through I-MEC, which he was part of, and then working closely with the ITF. And that's looking at, like I said, global world wage agreements, employment conditions, welfare provision, all that sort of stuff. And I think that David's role in that was representing the ship owners, we'd say. And I think that, you know, I've sort of ducked your question a little bit just to kind of make that extra point about it. But the question you asked me was, you know, what is it about somebody's ability to do that? And I think the thing with David was, I don't know what his politics were. I have no idea. He was a very down-to-earth guy. And I would say he was very pro-fair treatment. So he was pro-worker, welfare, and all those sorts of things. But clearly he was representing commercial interest there. And these are sort of this ability to be able to see both sides and understand what a win is for both sides. And to carefully bring that about, through almost through a process of kind of elimination, if you like, of-- but real pragmatism would be-- and not getting emotional seeing what was there to be won and seeing that through. And I think that's what I would say. His crowning achievement, I guess, if you were trying to put it all into one thing, was to get a good outcome for both parties that was workable. And guess what? It is. It's working. It's out there. Things are much improved. Still pockets where we have to go. But those who are, let's say, the good operators are focused on these things in a way that they weren't previously. And there is some sort of consistency around there and some global ideas around what good looks like and what fair treatment looks like, and all that that weren't in place before. And all of that would have been very hard for, you know? But the fact that David is loved by the likes of ITF, Steve Cotton wrote a very nice piece about him on their website. And the employers as well, Simon Spacey, represents CMA CGM. He wrote a very, very nice piece about him, obviously, as they both knew him as a friend as well. But they're representing very, very different interests there. And they both looked to him as someone with integrity and honesty. And I think that's the thing. If you really want some day, someone to talk about you like this on a podcast, I think those are two things that should be really on your mind is having absolute integrity, absolute reliability. If you say we've got a deal, then we've got a deal. So an honest broker and someone who can be pragmatic and get things done. And I think that's what we're missing a lot of in the world today is a lot of people are kind of digging into positions that will never be reconciled. And I think that the ability to not let perfection be the enemy of good is something that's missed as well these days. I was in holiday a couple of years ago and ended up sat in a bar with a stranger who was politically on-- it couldn't be further from me in terms of points of view. And actually, it was fascinating to spend a couple of hours. I think we probably went on for like three, four hours, discussing with them on a very, very human level, where that point of view comes from and where my point of view comes from. And actually, there are so many more points of common ground than you would ever get through something like social media where opinions just get more and more polarized. And so I think it's-- I kind of-- my read from that is it's a nice reminder of two things. One is to actually sit down and build relationships with people who may be on the opposite side of a debate. And then the second is that actually pragmatism often-- in reality is the thing that carries the day, rather than getting hugely ideological about-- it's one thing to be right. It's another thing to be effective. And I think sometimes you've got to sacrifice a bit of one for the other. 100%. Yeah. And his recognition, just to say as well, he also was awarded the merchant Navy Medal, which was recognition to the services of the shipping and to see fair or welfare. And I should also say on that, see fair or welfare, part he worked very closely with people like Icewan and was a champion for that as well. Last point, I'll just make about David. His family have put out that he is having a memorial at the end of this month. And should you wish to attend, you can write to them for the details. And they are also going to be holding the memorial online as well. So maybe we can put the details of that in there for anybody who's-- watch this and interested to find out a bit more about David. So rest in peace David and thank you for everything that you've done for the industry. Yeah, what a lovely tribute and from someone who was a beneficiary of what you did but didn't know you. Thank you. It's a nice thing to think about that these things just didn't exist 20 years ago. All right, should we do a software story? Yes, we had better. I'll question for you, which are the class societies you would most associate with being software vendors. Oh, that's an interesting one. I would have said brand level in the past. My first would have been to say DNV because DNV always felt to me to be the most kind of digital first of the group. But having obviously worked closely with Lloyd's register and mainly through their acquisition of one ocean and now of course ocean technology group, they are I think edgy in terms of actual capabilities for me. But I think from a brand positioning point of view, I thought DNV probably had the edge. Yeah, yeah, I was expecting DNV, I was expecting LR. I would have maybe expected ABS because they've obviously went down there sort of wave site route. But I open up a new tab on your computer. All right, this is live, everyone. Yeah, this is like an unboxing. What am I talking about? I go to ctrustsetrust.kr.kr. That's career and isn't it? Yeah. The career and registry. Is it? And have a look at their brand new software hub. Well, it's going like it's creeping along. So everyone must be hitting them website right now. Here we go. So what should I look at Nick? Are you in? I'm on. Yeah, you're on. So this is quite interesting. I would never have called the career and registry out for being a software driven registry or even having software products. And I thought it was quite interesting. They have in the last couple of weeks pulled all of their software offerings into a single place, which is this software hub. And what they plan to do with it is use the hub. First off, it's like a way for people to access. How many they've got? They've got 10 different software packages that do various things from everything from supporting with shaft alignment, supporting with LNG, filling loading limits, ship structural strength analysis against the career and registry rules, file management solution that supports the rest of their software to work. They're pulling it all into a single software hub. So obviously I'm assuming, I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming what's happened is over the last 10, 15 years, they've built various kind of point solutions to support their members. And then never at any point had any kind of overarching strategy about how all of this comes together until today. And they launched it a couple of weeks ago. And what's quite interesting is that they are leaning on AI to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of two things. One is dealing with customer inquiries. And basically when a customer inquiry comes in, directing them to the right piece of software and the right part of the business to engage with. And then two, using all of that data to produce new software that will then be released to the hub. So like looking for pockets of demand that they're not quite fulfilling with their existing software. And they're going to launch new products directly into this software hub over the coming months and years. So I just thought it was quite an interesting point around how you position yourself as a class society or as any organization, whether you're positioning yourself as a tech company or not or just as a sort of service provider. But it certainly seems like Korean registry has joined the software arms race that we've seen across all the other class societies in industry. Class. Yeah. I like, I'm just looking at basically what I'm looking at here. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a series of sort of apps coming together in a suite, not unlike creative cloud or Microsoft Office suites, something like that. But I'm quite cool ones. Yeah. C trust fancies. I'm into fancies. The ship fatigue analysis system simplified direct and spectral. I'm not sure what we would find in there. But presumably this fatigue analysis is actually about the vessel fatigue, surely rather than structural fatigue. Yeah. I want to have a go on kr real 360, which is their extended reality ship based familiarization training, which I always thought would be the thing that would that would have grabbed you. Yeah, I didn't see that that was that was what was going on there is a passenger vessel in the in the picture. I have to have a look. But yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think one of the things that technology does and the digitization of things, I'm pretty sure we've talked about this before, but it perhaps it bears a second comment that you get convergence. You get natural convergence of things. It reaches into that there comes a point where any of these businesses in maritime are thing any business really will start to look at redefining themselves and asking themselves, what is what is what is our core business? What does it that we do? And I see some really smart moves happening in the industry as well where people are really bold and they'll just kind of go, yeah, we've got these two or three products, but this is not core, this is not core to our mission. Let's just divest ourselves with that. Get rid of it. There was one in the news. I nearly talked to bed, I couldn't find enough intelligent things to say about it there, but just the other day, there was one and they gave that very smart reason. They were just like, well, we're focused on environment and this doesn't really fit in that. It's a good product, but better if someone else takes it forward. Versus saying, actually, we have now got a suite of products here. We can offer services in a different way. Class is interesting because they're quite sprawling businesses typically anyway. I think one of the other things that's interesting is you look at what they did with classification typically and advisory kind of grew out of classification. But actually, if you look at the way the business is structured and what they're really about, you do actually see a flip and it's actually their advisory businesses which can classify your vessel. As we move into different frontiers, you're having to think about all of this. It's not just about the structural concerns of the vessel. It's also about all the digital capabilities and what you're putting in place and where your business is going to go in the future or these sorts of things. I think there's a lot to still work out with that as well because these are very traditional, very entrenched businesses that are innovating and are looking at ways that they can differentiate and stuff like that. But they're also big. Most of them are really big. I don't know about the KR. I don't know what sort of size they are. But they're big physical, dependent businesses and all of those makes it quite tricky to move quickly. I think that point around really understanding what your core business is and then kind of throwing everything at how you deliver that core business well. I think is a really valuable point. And actually, Elara, a great example of this done quite well to their credit back in 2020, maybe 21. Elara used to have a massive business assurance and a massive cyber risk management arm that had nothing to do with maritime and they sort of turned around and said actually our core business is maritime. We're going back to our kind of route and they sold it. I think they sold it about 100 million dollars. And that's what kind of gave them the firepower to then start buying up software businesses in the maritime space. And now they've become this kind of core, working towards perhaps becoming a vertically integrated software and services and class provider for the maritime industry. I think you can sit there and think what business I mean, I'm in the services business or you can sit there and think what business I mean, I'm in the vessel safety and performance business and the delivery mechanism, maybe services, it may be software, it may be providing class. And I think that's a much more interesting way of thinking about your business. It's very easy to kind of fall into the trap of thinking that the business you're in is the kind of delivery method for the business rather than the actual core value you provide to the market. Yes, it's classifying the end product of what you do and letting that decide what your business is about is probably the most dangerous thing you could possibly do. I've been working with quite a lot of different businesses and one of the discussions that typically I don't provoke but ends up happening is what is your business actually for? What is core? And the reason that that's important is if you misclassify, your messaging and everything will never be right. The conversations that you have with your customer and everything be all over the place as well. Whereas once you get it right, everything becomes easy. The M&A that you're interested in becomes easy. The new products that you develop become, you know, easy choices. I mean, not easy to get in this early execute, but everything, the way in which the talent that you need becomes simple, the structure and operating model. Everything becomes simple and very often businesses will get kind of, you can tell that sometimes they're chomping at the bit and they want it, yeah, but we just want to get this new product out there and I'll say to them, hang on, let's just go right back. Let's go right back to the very fundamentals of the brand. And they might not be that we're doing a rebrand, it might not be that it's visual branding or anything like that, but conversation. And invariably at that point, that's when it starts to get really interesting and you start to see. And in one case, there was one company I was looking at and working with and they thought their business was about something completely different. Have you seen the founder? The founder is a brilliant film and it's about the founding story of the guy who founded the McDonald's Corporation and he didn't actually found the first restaurant. That was the McDonald's brothers. It's this guy called Ray Crock and he loved it so much what they've done in this one site that he wanted to franchise it across the country. And so he started doing a start-up in these franchise restaurants, but the quality was really poor and the business model just wasn't working. I think it was something like half a cent on the dollar that he was taking in franchise fees from all of these restaurants and so he's kind of starting to drown in debt, not covering his costs. And then he meets this finance guy who goes, you're not in the restaurant business, you're in the land business. You need to buy the sites then rent it to the franchisees so that you've got full control over the quality. And then you're effectively just taking a mortgage payment and you get some franchise fees on top. And McDonald's today is one of the largest landowners in the world. They own prime real estate in London, New York, Tokyo, Singapore. They own the land out of the majority of the restaurants they operate from because they had this kind of realization actually. The core business of McDonald's is actually going to be land. It's not running restaurant franchises. It's a really, really good watch. It's one of the kind of hours of your time. Yeah, that sounds really interesting. The other thing as well is just to say is kind of wound into that as well is what do people actually buy from you? Right. The other thing, if you think they're buying product from you, then your features, you're probably doing it wrong. They're buying it for a purpose, right? There to be compliant, to have security, peace of mind, to be able to kind of keep lean margins in their own business. There'll always be, there's always something there's something motivating them to do it. That's not about the nuts and bolts of your product. Which is why it doesn't really help a lot of the time to go into conversations, talking about features and bells and whistles, which is tempting when that's what you've been wearing your fingers to the bone making. You kind of feel like everyone needs it. But it's, you know, they're buying something else. On the subjects of entrepreneurship and another story, sort of my other story this week is a new fund that's launched. Mara Liberum, capital partners, I don't know if you heard of them. No, I haven't actually. So they've been around for a while and they did a first fund, but they now come back to launch their second fund. And they're really interesting. Obviously, I think I've never actually done any latter, but I think Mara is see and Liberum is free. They're all about, yeah, I think they're all about enabling the freedom of the seas, which has obviously become very, very timely in the last few weeks, certainly. But they are a venture fund that wants to target solutions that support free trade. So half of that is what I would call commercial trade. And then half of that is actually kind of maritime defense. So they're kind of fine. Manifesto is kind of opening sentence is, is yeah, exactly. They've said stability at sea is the foundation of the modern economy, maritime power shapes, global peace and prosperity, preserving free and open seas requires sustained investment in capability, resilience and cooperation. And I did a little bit of digging into some of their past investments. They're quite interesting, actually. Winwood is one of their, one of their previous investments. Regent craft, I don't believe you've seen Regent craft. Have you seen any of their videos? They're really cool. They are developing wing and ground effect. So wing and ground ships, which anyone who's been to see on the deck side will know them from the coal raise because they have special rules in the coal raise, despite the fact that they haven't really existed for the last of the 30, 40 years around the world. But they effectively use something called wing and ground effect to fly very, very close to the surface of the sea. And so they can go at speed of up to 500 miles an hour. But they do it about sort of 15, 20 foot off the surface of the sea and they're highly, highly efficient. So you've got the kind of speed of a plane, but with the fuel efficiency of a ship, that's the kind of idea. They were invented and used quite widely through the Soviet Union. And there were some really big experimental Soviet Union wing and ground effect vehicles. And then when the Soviet Union collapsed, all the development stopped. This company region have decided they'd to revive that. And they've started working on initially passenger vessels that will be able to do a kind of LA to San Francisco run. A little bit slower than a commercial plane, but for a much, much cheaper ticket price. And then there's a whole host of kind of defense implications to that as well. And what kind of, for that sort of wing and ground, one assumes that this is a lot sort of cheaper from a fuel perspective. It uses a lot of fuel. Yes, yeah, yeah. You get the kind of fuel. It's not quite the fuel efficiency of a ship, but you sort of get the relative fuel efficiency of a ship. So the amount of energy that has to go into lift, we're venturing well out of my field of expertise here, but the amount of energy that has to go into lift is significantly reduced because of the way the wing interacts with the surface of the ocean. And you're very welcome to comment on actual explanation if you're either from region or if you know more about this. Come on, come on and tell us. It's an education, live on air. Yeah, no, it's much more fuel efficient than a plane. So the fund is not just software is actually looking at actual vessels as well. Well, one of their other investments is a company called Soronic, who are one of the more advanced autonomous surface vessel providers that primarily works in in defense. They've actually just been awarded a $392 million contract by the US government to produce autonomous vessels for the defense market. So they're another very interesting company. So they've now closed another fund and the plan is that this new fund will advance the adoption of advanced technologies across the maritime sector with a focus on digitalization with the aim of reshaping how vessels operate and how maritime infrastructure is managed. And they seem to have, I don't know, a great deal about this specific scheme, but they seem to have much funding up to $150 million from the US government as well. So yeah, really interesting. It'll be really interesting to see what they back in the coming sort of 18 months or so. But also the other thing that's really interesting for me around that is that that fund, literally the discussion we just heard about businesses, really knowing what their core is and what their real sense of mission and so on. It's quite unusual, isn't it, for a fund to to have what looks like a very kind of clear sort of brand promise. And you know, I think probably the only other time I can remember when we had Manishon from Marys' investments and they had a very clear vision of where they wanted to play and where they were going to add value and so on. But this sort of sounds very, very polished in terms of knowing exactly what they want us as unusual. But like I said, it gives them a very clear idea of what businesses are in interest and what opportunities and obviously, you know, a good platform on which to connect these things in the market. Yeah, and I think it is a very forward thinking move when you think about the whole state of geopolitics. The state of the world today, a few people have called out kind of 10, 15 years ago, fewer people have actually got themselves into a position where they can make a real impact on that. But I think actually this fund's probably one of them. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think taking the concept of freedom of navigation and building a fund around it that supports both the economic and defense, you could sort of say, well, that to very different markets than they are, but it is a kind of singular mission. So yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't really thought about that. Interesting, because there are clearly a number of big moves to be made and looking at that future. And you mentioned there, the people who 10, 15 years ago saw the way the wind was blowing on some of these things. If you look at the geopolitical situation that we're in now, if you're honest with yourself, has that been a huge surprise of what's happened in the last 12 months? The signs have been there for some time. So it's interesting to think about what are the kind of things that could happen, that could fall, that could radically transform and change things. And I saw one, not in the maritime press, but a maritime story, which I like to share with you. Imagine effectively that you could use the equivalent of an anti-acid tablet to drop into the sea to de-acidify it and to thereby allow it to absorb much more CO2. So back to basics, just quickly, the sea absorbs a huge amount of carbon dioxide. Though, if you think of it as a sponge, it fills up with the CO2. It can't absorb any more, and consequently that stays in the atmosphere. If you can rinse the sponge, let's say, and then it can absorb a lot more. And this is exactly what they don't describe it in the terms. They don't mention a sponge, for example. This is all you're getting all the time from me. There's a rarest improvisation. They call it ocean alkalinity enhancement. Of course, that's how much more scientific, isn't it? Adding alkaline chemicals to sea water to increase the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, which is kind of why I said, in a recent experiment, in the Gulf of Maine, so lobster, tasty lobster country, researchers released about 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide, caustic soda into the ocean, marked with red dye, so they could track how it dispersed. So presumably, it doesn't need to be red. So it's basically antacid for the ocean, you know, gavascond for the ocean. Completely mad. But this is just a test. It's just an experiment. The experiment appears to show, so Delica, as I mentioned, lovely tasty lobsters and so on, off the coast of Maine. It appears to show absolutely no harm to playing to onto fish or to lobster larvae, was some nerves in there around who is it? People like friends of the earth saying, you know, this cannot possibly be a good idea. But in theory, if indeed it does work and if indeed the trials do show that there's no damage, then it potentially opens up the way for an enormous role for shipping to play in the antacidification of the oceans. Now, as far as anyone watching this will know, what you can put off over the side of a ship is extremely highly regulated, much more so than on land, right? Anything that goes over the side, you've got the oil record book, which reconciles how much oil was taken on board, how much was used. There should be no delta if there is the suspicion is that it's gone over the side, you're in big trouble, garbage, all of this stuff, highly regulated, that you don't put anything in the ocean, the ocean is there to be protected from that point of view. And this would be the opposite way around because of course, if this works, it would come down to the world, shipping to put that into the seas all over the ocean. So what, the shipping industry will have to drop antacid tablets sort of along the way when you're crossing the ocean. It's geoengineering basically. geoengineering, that's it. I get slightly nervous about these. I've seen quite a lot of these sort of geoengineering concepts. I don't think anyone's really sort of looked to doing them at any scale yet, it kind of takes you into the realm of unintended consequences. And actually a really interesting case study, non-intended consequences is the sulfur cap because of the industry switched from a heavy fuel oil that was high sulfur to bring in caps on sulfur in 2020. Heavy fuel oil with a high sulfur content also throws up a lot of particulate matter. So you know, kind of tiny microscopic bits of solids that go up into the atmosphere. And actually it turns out act as something of a cooling blanket against the sun. When the sulfur cap came into force and ships switched to either very low sulfur fuel oil or marine gas oil, the major benefit was the impact on kind of human health, particularly in poor cities around the world. But it was estimated that something at 50,000 premature deaths per year because of sulfur in the atmosphere from shipping that was stopped. But climate change actually got massively accelerated because this particular matter was no longer being put into the atmosphere. And so there's various, seem various scientific papers looking at, well, can you put a less harmful particulate matter into the atmosphere to help slow down climate change again? But it all feels like, you know, if you if you if you try and over-engineer you may end up causing some other disaster, somewhere else, often there's sort of no good options. But if if I'm fantastic in the sea works, then let's go for it. But I think a large merchant vessel carries somewhere in the region of 100 million liters of water as ballast when there when there's in a ballast condition. So actually 65,000 liters is nothing to a to a to a to a container ship or to a tanker that's in ballast. And actually there's a whole host, this is a discussion for another day, but there's a whole host of unintended consequences that you do get or at least you did get when you pick up ballast in one part of the ocean and you take in lots of creepy crawlies and all sorts of things when you pick the ballast up and then you drop it off in another part of the ocean. You end up with invasive species sort of crossing, crossing oceans and going and taking over coastal regions and all sorts of stuff, which has been fixed by the Balanced Water Management Convention. But that is a topic that is so dull that there is no way I would ever talk about it on this podcast. So I can make it. I can jazz it up for you. Can you? Can you? Yeah, the zebra muscle. I think it's a New Zealand muscle. The zebra muscle and a not curious little muscle. Um, dropped in ballast water into the Great Lakes. Right. Which it flourished. Yeah. Not a nice much happier there than than where it started out in New Zealand. I'd be quite happy there as well. I think it sounds lovely. But the one thing that they really love is a little bit of warm water and they got themselves all into the cooling ducts of the power stations. So they all gathered and thrived, crusting up the whole cooling vents for power stations causing masses of trouble. Not as dull as you think. But stretching the definition of interesting here. Yeah. Yeah. We just don't just come back to it. Initial results from the trial. Local pH increase from from 7.95 to about 8.3, which is roughly pre-industrial levels, which is pretty amazing. And around 10 tons of carbon were absorbed during experiment. So there's something in it. We have to watch this space. We'll see what happens. Very cool. Very cool. So I think that's it for this week's Undocked and we'll see you all soon. Awesome. Thanks everyone.