Maersk Tankers has announced plans to expand its digital team from seven to 23 employees as it tries to keep pace with increasing demand for technology-powered services in the shipping market.

The company’s digital strategy is focused on developing systems and processes to enhance vessel efficiency and cut carbon emissions, including support for charterers in selecting the best suitable vessel for each voyage based on its speed and fuel consumption, as well as calculating the best voyage route while taking future positioning into consideration.

While this has typically been a time-intensive process involving manual calculations, Maersk Tankers’ digital team is working on systems to manage these activities in a matter of seconds, presenting charterers with a range of options to decide from based on their preferences.

“With demand for digitised shipping increasing, we are adding capacity to keep up with the pace. We’re also reorchestrating our team, moving from a generalist digital department to one of expertise in high-demand areas,” said Bjørn Ørving, Head of Digital at Maersk Tankers.

“We’re working towards providing the best possible software that can ensure our brilliant colleagues are able to focus on providing even better services and solutions.”

The digital team plans to hire 16 new employees this year, largely data scientists, data engineers, and back- and front-end developers. Seven of these positions will be reallocated from an agency to the inhouse team at Maersk Tankers.

A third of the technical developers hired will be new graduates or juniors, with the company taking co-responsibility for their further development in the field of digital technology. The team will also be working closely with universities and sharing data with them for research, Maersk Tankers says.