• Zeaborn Ship Management to handle global purchasing of marine lubricants via largest procurement platform
• Closelink's digital platform provides new price transparency, enhances efficiency and allows significant cost savings in ship management
• The aim: better diagnostics of consumption, automated purchase planning and more safety in ship operation

Closelink, largest procurement platform for maritime lubricants, wins Zeaborn Ship Management as a customer. The ship manager with a fleet of around 130 ships will from now on handle the procurement of all engine oils, lubricants and greases for ship operations via the Hamburg-based start-up. Next to fuel, lubricants are one of the largest cost categories. An average 2.800 TEU container ship needs more than 60 tons of engine oil per year as well as up to 20 additional lubricants worth more than 100.000 dollars to operate auxiliary engines, on- board machinery or pumps. The global market for maritime lubricants is currently estimated at six billion US dollars per year.

"Digitization helps us and the entire industry to make internal processes more efficient. This is a top priority for us and our customers. By partnering with Closelink, we benefit from an intelligent digital platform that offers the best possible support for our procurement, significantly improves lubricant purchasing and helps reduce operating costs. Also, the intuitive and user-friendly handling of Closelink’s platform has convinced us," says Sven Henze, Senior Vice President Procurement at Zeaborn Ship Management.

More than half of the fleet are container ships of all sizes, plus bulkers, oil and product tankers and multi-purpose vessels.

‍Digital platform for maritime lubricants: More efficient, more transparent and cheaper purchasing

‍Closelink is one of the pioneers in the digitization of the maritime economy. Today, operations are dominated by manual processes with Excel lists, telephone and fax. Closelink's procurement platform digitizes and automates the purchasing of marine lubricants. Zeaborn's contracts with its suppliers for the purchase of lubricants are now transferred to the platform developed by Closelink, including for example delivery ports, specifications for the individual ship engines, availabilities and prices.

Buyers at Zeaborn can now use Closelink to compare price scenarios, request availabilities, place orders and view statistics at the click of a mouse. With 130 ships, each with 20 different lubricants and at least four bunker appointments per year, this saves significant time in purchasing management. In addition, the current lubricant stocks per ship can be managed transparently at a central location. Thus, purchasing can not only analyze consumption, remaining quantities and routes. The price comparison between the coming ports of call is also possible without complications and allows cost-optimised planning. In individual cases, savings of up to 30 percent are possible.

"We are very pleased that we are now able to make these services available to the Zeaborn Ship Management team and offer the parties involved a benefit in efficiency and security of supply," says Philippe Lavarde, founder and CEO of Closelink. And should the contract suppliers in small ports be unable to deliver, Closelink also offers a digital spot market for purchasing from local suppliers.

‍Integration into the ERP system and future upgrades of the platform

‍In partnership with Zeaborn, Closelink’s platform now features an interface with the ERP system. Thus, all purchases made in Closelink are automatically transmitted to the company software. More interfaces to ERP and accounting systems are planned. But the platform wants to do more than just making the purchase of lubricants easier and more efficient. Lavarde sees many more opportunities for the maritime industry from digitization: "We are already working on algorithms and other ideas that will allow better recording of consumption and further automation of purchase planning. We also want to expand our product portfolio vertically in the coming months".

This not only reduces costs, but also increases safety. Low oil levels and lack of lubricants are a real risk in ship operation. In March 2019, the main engine of a cruise ship shut down automatically due to sensors signalling a low oil level. Experts suspect that due to the ship's movements in heavy seas, the oil pumps were no longer able to take in the existing engine oil, the filling quantity was indeed sufficient, but very low. Professional stock management prevents the ship and crew from engine damage, loss of manoeuvrability and accidents.

Today, more than 70 manufacturers, distributors and dealers are already registered with their products and services on the purchasing platform, making Closelink the world's largest procurement platform for marine lubricants. Closelink itself remains completely independent. The platform charges an annual user fee per ship and a transaction fee for new business generated via the platform. Among Closelink’s investors are Ricardo co-founder Stefan Wiskemann, the Next Logistics Accelerator and the maritime early-stage investor TecPier. The start-up company raised a total of one million euros in fresh capital in the last financing round in May 2019.