Cargo ships docking at commercial ports incur charges called “fees” and “port call charges.” This may be port fees, tugage fees, and pilotage fees. It’s a complex patchwork, with all ports running their own programs, most of which are on spreadsheets. Port calls cost all ships worldwide more than $220 billion each year.
Now, a startup we last reported on raised €6.1 million in seed funding and has now raised a $16 million Series A round led by European VC Atomico.
Harbor Lab, a Greek maritime software start-up, said that the cost of a ship calling at a port is the second largest expense for commercial ships, after fuel, at about US$2.2 million per ship per year.
The company claims its platform can streamline these costs and reduce the margin of error for invoicing errors and overpayments from 20% to 3% per port call.
“I’m a potential user of the software we created,” Antonis Malaxianakis told me over the phone. “I’ve manually checked over 20,000 payment accounts myself, so I know every aspect of the business and the industry. point. So for us, once we have seed funding and we can afford the software engineering costs, we can focus on a very rigorous roadmap that we feel very confident about success.
He added: “We have a war. But in the shipping industry, our freight rates are increased by this and the additional danger. We are very focused on doing proper KYC checks on all parties on board. Ships and agents are all over the world Everywhere. When the war happened overnight, we had to sanction 100 participants.
Atomico partner Ben Blume told me: “We’ve been looking at core logistics processes and moving goods around the world. With this lens, we came to Harbor Lab. There are several different stages of the commercial maritime journey. Everyone needs software around them … This company really feels like the most exciting company out there.
He also said: “I think Antonis is a very visionary founder who brings tremendous energy to the business he is building and has deep industry experience.”
New environmental legislation and various geopolitical crises make it even more urgent to address the complexities of freight transport.
Harbor Lab already counts shipping giants Great Eastern Shipping, Oldendorff, Veson Nautical and 90POE as customers and partners.
Apostolos Apostolakis, a partner at Venture Friends and a seed investor, told me: “As one of Harborlab’s first institutional investors, we were convinced of its potential early on because Antonis articulated it so clearly. We were very We are fortunate to be able to experience first-hand the steady progress toward realizing this vision, and with this new round behind us, we are even more excited about the future.
With existing investors Notion Capital, Venture Friends, SpeedInvest and The Dock, as well as new investors Endeavor Catalyst and Maritime VC TMV, the Greek startup’s total funding reaches approximately $22.5 million.
