Podcast: Marcura CEO Henrik Hyldahn on AI for Modern Vessel Operations

In this edition of The Maritime Executive's podcast series, Marcura Group CEO Henrik Hyldahn joined TME to talk about the advent of AI tools for shipping professionals.

Hyldahn started his corporate career at Coca-Cola and Carlsberg in Denmark, but a meeting with a Norwegian shipowner convinced him to try out the maritime world instead. He became CEO of the digital marketplace platform ShipServ in 2020, then took over as CEO of Marcura Group after the company acquired ShipServ in 2023-4. That merger brought together Marcura's experience on the voyage side of shipping transactions for charterers, traders and operators, along with ShipServ's platform for managing vessel opex and procurement.

Under Hyldahn, Marcura is introducing AI tools to augment - not replace - the capabilities of human shipping professionals. AI tools can create documents in minutes and review charterparties for inconsistencies, catching mistakes that could cost thousands of dollars. Human specialists still have to validate the output and own the outcome, since mistakes in managing a voyage can result in cascading costs. AI also captures institutional knowledge of existing staff, preserving skills and lessons-learned for the next generation of employees.

"The first thing you want to use AI for is to eliminate as much of the work as possible — to get it completely automated and gone so that they focus on the decision side of things, on what are really the core value levers for them," says Hyldahn. For the details, listen in below.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.