ABB expands its digital decarbonisation offering

Weather routing is key to optimising fuel consumption, helping reduce vessel emissions and supporting maritime decarbonisation. The acquisition will position ABB as one of the market leaders in ship route optimisation.

“We look forward to welcoming our new colleagues to the ABB family. With DTN Shipping’s unique weather routing solutions, combined with our existing digital portfolio, we can bring significant benefits for ship owners and operators worldwide,” said Juha Koskela, division president, ABB Marine & Ports.

“This is integral to our commitment to deploy digital solutions for the purpose of driving better operational decisions, resulting in increasingly sustainable performance of vessels. With this acquisition, we can now offer all levels of digitalisation, across all fleet types and sizes, creating a unique offering in vessel and voyage performance.”

Strategic move

The acquisition of the DTN Shipping portfolio covers vessel routing software, including analytics, reporting and modelling applications. 

The acquisition comes at a time when real-time weather routing analytics play an increasingly important role in helping vessels optimise voyage efficiency and safety – something that will have a knock-on for ports too.

Complementing ABB’s existing Ability digital offering, the DTN Shipping business brings market-leading application programming interfaces (API) to ABB and expands the number of vessels connected to ABB networks to over 5,000.

Current customers of DTN Shipping will benefit from ABB’s expertise in electric, automated and digital marine solutions, securing more opportunities to gain efficiencies, save fuel and cut emissions.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, as well as completion of applicable works councils’ consultation procedures. It is expected to close during Q2 2024.