Winning the highly-coveted Innovation Award at the recent Seawork Expo 2024, Europe’s largest on-water commercial vessel expo, is affirmation of all the hard work that Sea-Flux has put into launching in the UK market in the past 12 months, according to the New Zealand maritime software company’s Managing Director, Tai Ellis.
Close to 1,000 vessels spread across multiple geographies and vessel types, including many deployed in fishing and aquaculture operations, are now using Sea-Flux’s software platform to establish enhanced safety at sea and to minimise crew, vessel and environmental risks.
Globally, around 40% of Sea-Flux’s customers are involved in the fishing and aquaculture sectors. Specifically in the UK, this number rises to 66%, with the remainder including tugs and barges, superyachts, tourism operators and support vessels.
“The UK business is growing rapidly for us, as we’ve only recently started marketing Sea-Flux with vessel templates built to meet the requirements of UK Maritime & Coastguard Agency,” Ellis told WF.
“We’re excited to be at the forefront of what we believe will be a rapidly growing market in the UK for digital vessel management solutions. With the introduction of the Workboat Code Edition 3 changes, which significantly increase vessel health and safety requirements, we expect to see operators moving to digital solutions to provide the required tools to become legislatively compliant, taking the pain and stress out of safety management and compliance.”
Ellis said: “Receiving the Innovation Award for Electronic and Electrical Systems at the European Commercial Marine Awards (EMCAs) at Seawork Expo, held in Southampton, UK, on 12-15 June 2024, was a huge vote of confidence in Sea-Flux by the judges, and recognition that the company is delivering real value to its UK customers.
“It will also add to our UK presence and brand awareness to be recognised with such a prestigious award opening doors to a far wider audience, having also received positive feedback from flag surveyors and MAIB inspectors over the last few months. ” he said.
While there are other vessel management solutions available across the world, Sea-Flux differs from many of the other digital vessel management platforms in two key respects: First, Sea-Flux has been developed and priced specifically for vessels in the 10- to 75-metre length category, rather than for larger vessels, which can make solutions overly-complicated and too expensive for smaller vessel operators; secondly, its development has been led by vessel first officers, and engineers, with significant crew input. This is to ensure it’s easy to follow and used effectively, while also delivering to all onboard users and shore-based management.
“Sea-Flux has been developed using modern tools, which have only recently become available – along with the ability to run on Apple iPhones and iPads and Android tablets as well as online via an internet browser from a laptop or PC,” Ellis explained. “Using this technology means the entire crew are more easily part of the solution, as all can directly access Sea-Flux from their own device in their own way. All crew have immediate access to safety checks, vessel documentation, checklists and much more.”
He continued: “At Sea-Flux, our mission is to significantly enhance vessel and crew safety through better access to vessel related, up to date information, enhancing situational awareness. Our goal is to be the best digital vessel management system available for our target vessel size, and to encourage the enthusiastic use of Sea-Flux to deliver safer outcomes. Ideally, we’d like to see all vessels using a digital vessel management solution – and even more so if they’re using Sea-Flux.”
As underlined by the award, the company has come a long way in a short space of time. The first test version of Sea-Flux was only launched in New Zealand in 2018. While technology available at that time was limiting in what it could provide users, more sophisticated tech emerged just in time for Sea-Flux to embark on a complete rewrite of the application in 2021.
Sea-Flux Version 2 was released to new customers in New Zealand in late 2022, in Australia in 2023, and in the UK this year.
“For the UK launch, we had to ensure Sea-Flux could meet the legislative requirements of the UK Maritime Coastguard Agency, and we worked very closely with Charles Blyth, a UK-based qualified surveyor and maritime safety expert to that end. Charles liked the solution so much that he’s now our UK representative and his business is providing local consulting as well as local support for Sea-Flux UK,” Ellis said.
While there’s been a significant overhaul to the original Sea-Flux application, and refinements are made on a continual basis, the company has remained steadfast on keeping it easy to understand and to use. The focus has continued in the switch from manual systems to the new digital solution and through the addition of multiple functionalities – everything from maintenance to risk assessments to digital logbooks, and the company believes this emphasis is likely the result of Ellis continuing to be a serving First Officer/Captain during the initial stages of the solution’s development.
In addition, Sea-Flux was developed from the ground up to run on iOS Apple devices as well as on Android devices, and via a browser on any device.
Another benefit of the development platform that’s been used is it will continue to run on a mobile phone and tablet without an internet connection, and then reconnect and transfer data seamlessly when reconnected to the internet, Ellis said.
Opened by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, and hosted by Mercator Media, Seawork this year celebrated its 25th edition. The event returns on 10-12 June 2025.
