Uni-Tankers Bets All 44 Ships on Voyage Optimisation

Danish tanker owner Uni-Tankers has signed a partnership with Sofar Ocean to deploy its Wayfinder voyage-optimisation platform across the company's entire 44-vessel fleet, which trades in both the spot market and on long-term contracts. The move is a full fleet-wide commitment rather than a trial on a handful of ships. What Wayfinder does: it turns weather, sea state and vessel-performance data into route and speed recommendations, and — crucially — tightens the coordination between the ship and the shore team so the whole operation is working from the same optimised plan rather than second-guessing each other. The number that anchors the decision: Sofar Ocean says shipowners using the platform in 2025 achieved an average fuel saving of 6.9% per voyage — a figure that, applied across a 44-ship tanker fleet, translates into meaningful fuel cost and emissions reductions and directly supports CII and FuelEU compliance. Uni-Tankers frames the deal as part of a strategy pairing operational efficiency and digital capability with fleet growth. Why this matters for ship managers: voyage optimisation is now one of the clearest, lowest-risk AI wins available — no hardware refit, measurable savings, and a compliance dividend — which is exactly why a growing operator is willing to standardise on it across every hull rather than run it on a cautious handful of ships first. The honest caveat: the 6.9% figure is a platform-wide average reported by the vendor, not a Uni-Tankers result, and real savings depend on trade pattern, baseline discipline and how faithfully crews follow the recommendations — so the number to watch is Uni-Tankers' own before-and-after fuel performance once the fleet is fully live. [Splash247 · Smart Maritime Network · Digital Ship]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 12 July 2026.

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