Rising Star of the week: MESH

A new concept is coming to life at EUROPORT 2021, the Rising Stars Pavilion powered by MARPRO. An area fully dedicated for promising maritime start-ups and next-gen innovators, where they can demonstrate how they contribute to a smarter, cleaner or/safer maritime future.

EUROPORT’s and MARPRO’s intention is to provide small start-ups a fair chance of showing their products and services to a large audience like EUROPORT is, for a budget friendly participation fee.

Company profile: Maritime Electronic Supply Hub

Since the news aired officially, the call to maritime start-ups has been answered and a great deal of interest has been shown to participate.

MESH a German start-up, developed the first and only food order and monitoring platform to the vessels and their staff. Make acquaintance of MESH in the following interview:

What is the idea behind MESH and its services?

MESH is the only order and monitoring tool to ensure a varied, sufficient, and healthy diet with a focus on nutrition & consumption beside detailed budget control. The vessels send readymade orders and get our globally unique promise to always receive everything ordered without ever exceeding the given budget.

We further replace all administrational efforts from the procurement process and connect the professionals directly. All this is monitored by the purchasing departments via their 24/7 dashboards.

How can MESH contribute to a smarter maritime future?

Our smart ordering tool includes an algorithm that manages the entire process of catering on board. It has standardized catalogues considering every special taste on board yet replacing all personal vanities. It is taking the risk of budget exceedance from the ship manager and simultaneously giving the freedom of ordering to the professional crew on board.

Further the local ship supplier is integrated automatically, what gives him the safety of being announced and recognized on every ship call in his area. The MESH marketplace brings advances by only shifting responsibilities. As every innovation it presumes an open mind set by the participants but then ensures a game changing process. The goal is to empower all participants to focus on cost triggers in the procurement process and no more waste time on “cent items” of consumables.

How can MESH contribute to a cleaner or safer maritime future?

When it comes to sustainability regarding environmental cleanness the replacement for the administration in the offices from managers, caterers and ship suppliers will help to digitalize those and think more strategic and waste less paper or email traffic.

With our marketplace it is intended to only use one supplier for your order. That means there will no longer be split orders where 5 different suppliers are driving to port and waiting in front of the vessel. Further this makes it easier to introduce recycling standards at our partners. The platform is transparent, and it has an integrated supplier rating, which enables us to monitor the waste management of our global partners and we can easily control their behavior. Further we are developing a plastic-free supply chain of drinking water with our supplier´s network.

Where is MESH in 5 years from now?

We will launch the system in June 2021 after a testing stage including the poc of three years with the modules of provisions and stores ordering in partnership with some German shipowners.

We expect to have the first 1.000 vessels globally under contract within 12 months. Further at this point we will be providing an entire procurement system including all needed parts on board of a vessel. We expect to run a fleet with the market share of 5%, representing a purchase volume of about 750m EUR annually in five years.

We are focusing on the markets of Asia, Greek and India. We plan to have teams of tech developers, representatives in several countries and our Hamburg-based team of maritime professionals taking care of customer needs and sustainable development ideas. In total we plan to have about 30-40 people working for MESH.

How is MESH organized, and who are the key people?

At the current stage MESH consists of two people in the management based in Hamburg plus a designated team of developers of 5 people.

Simon Burhorst is the CEO and co-founder of MESH. He is a skilled ship supplier with an experience of 12+ years in the market. He is mainly responsible for networking and customer care.

Henning Weise is the main developer of the order form, the founder and COO of the company. He is a former mariner, a studied logistic and previously manager in maritime catering companies. He is taking care of the development and evaluation of the system and all strategic matters together with Simon.

Both met in a former company where they have been working as a caterer with the order form in static format as the system has proven its workability and concept.