Steve Bee, Group Marketing and Strategic Projects Director of marine fuels testing company VPS, on Monday (16 February) outlined the evolution of Maress software application and elaborated on Maress 2.0, an enhanced and advanced version with the addition of new key features: 

Maritime decarbonization legislation and directives continue to increase and diversify. This places elevated demands upon shipowners and operators to provide meaningful, transparent and traceable data to legislative bodies, in order to substantiate their hopefully decreasing carbon-footprint and increasing compliance performance.

Since its launch in 2016, the VPS Maress software application has led the drive to assist in the decarbonization of the offshore shipping market. This cloud-based system, where no hardware installation is required, seamlessly connects with leading providers of data collection and ship-to-shore technologies. The aim is to significantly reduce fuel and energy consumption, offering environmental, financial, and strategic benefits to its users, delivering tangible business value through its functionality and insights.

With more than 700 offshore vessels currently utilizing Maress to reduce their fuel consumption, emissions and costs, via the proven energy efficiency solutions Maress provides, has seen this software application go from strength to strength.

The proof of the impact Maress can provide, has been seen through three successive Annual Summer Campaigns 2023-25, where VPS invited numerous offshore shipping companies and their vessels to participate in a three-month programme (June-August), each year. With each vessel using Maress, the campaign is a competition to see how much carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced per vessel and as a collective fleet, utilizing the tools Maress provides.

The results have been very impressive:

2025 – 300+ vessels from 12 leading shipping companies saved approximately 12,000mt of carbon dioxide emissions.  On average the participating vessels improved their efficiency by more than 10%. That kind of progress doesn’t happen by chance – it is the result of practice, dedication and crews continuously refining how they operate. Post-campaign, VPS highlighted the vessel, Volantis, a CSV operated by Havila Subsea & Renewables, and its dedicated crew. Throughout the campaign Volantis spent ~75 % of her days in DP or Transit, modes that account for >85 % of total fuel use. Yet the crew still delivered significant savings through relentless, real time optimization. The Master of the Volantis stated,  “We’re always chasing the next increment. There’s a continuous dialogue between bridge, engine room, charterer and shore management on how to do better. During transits we agree an economical speed window with the client, then run only the engines and thrusters we need – each kept in its sweet spot load range.”

2024 – 303 vessels from 12 leading shipping companies saved over 7,000 mt of carbon dioxide emissions. Back in 2024,  REM HSEQ Manager Iliyan Aleksandrov commented: “REM has committed to optimising the energy consumption of our operations and being an active player in the ongoing transition to a more sustainable maritime industry. We achieved our ISO 50001 certification this year, and amongst other initiatives, we were excited to extend our working relationship with VPS Decarbonisation on this campaign. Crew dedication, strong focus on energy efficiency and consumption optimization, combined with VPS´ decarb advisory service and Maress software were the key factors in achieving the amazing results”.

2023 – 133 vessels from 8 leading shipping companies saved 10,000mt of carbon dioxide emissions. Back in 2023, Solstad Offshore’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Tor Inge Dale concluded: “We strive to stay in the forefront of the industry’s change towards more sustainable operations, and we firmly believe in collaboration in combination with powerful digital tools such as Maress to facilitate just the kind of benchmarking to make this happen. We´ll be ready for the next campaign, and hopefully with friendly competition against even more vessels and companies wanting to be part of the change”.

Maress has and continues to evolve, to lessen the workload on ship operators, when it comes to monitoring, verifying and reporting, vessel performance and efficiency, plus providing actionable insights at every level, from fleet-wide trends to the performance of individual vessel operations.

And now, the evolution continues through the recently launched Maress 2.0. This enhanced and advanced version, allows users to instantly compare vessels, or track a single vessel’s progress over time, helping to identify opportunities for efficiency and cost savings. Integrated data validation and smart notifications support in ensuring the vessel data remains trustworthy, so operators and their crew can respond to issues before they impact operations or compliance.

Existing users of Maress will have peace-of-mind as they see that the new Maress works seamlessly alongside their existing version, allowing the continuation of all previous functionalities. All the key features from legacy Maress have been transferred and enhanced within the new Maress 2.0 platform, with the addition of new key features.

Key Highlights of Maress 2.0:

• Improved analytics and reporting with great flexibility on time periods
• Weather information per day in-map provides more insights
• Understand the effect of your initiatives by baseline comparison year on year
• Support for alternative fuels such as Biofuels
• Useful voyage replay with weather, activities and efficiency meters
• Enhance your data quality with the new Data QA and Validation module
• Optimize your energy utilization with advanced Energy Analytics
• Future-proof technology and adaptive user interface

In terms of benchmarking a fleet’s performance against historical baselines or any custom data range, Maress Fleet allows comparison of any period in order to identify trends and measure the impact of operational changes.

Note: The full article by VPS can be viewed here. 

Photo credit: VPS
Published: 19 February, 2026