Project44 reels in Ocean Insights in ‘largest acquisition in visibility space’

With port congestion, particularly in California’s San Pedro Bay, making headlines, project44 made a huge splash Thursday in announcing it had acquired Ocean Insights to provide global supply chain visibility to its customers.

“BCOs [beneficial cargo owners] are getting squeezed at the ports and are screaming for relief. There is just way more freight coming into ports than the ports can handle, creating a record number of vessels waiting to get unloaded,” project44 founder and CEO Jett McCandless told FreightWaves. “Project44 and Ocean Insights can provide relief for both freight on the water and freight at origin. 

“Ocean Insights tracks all commercial vessels down to the berthing slots at each terminal in the ports,” McCandless added. “Our AI-powered algorithms process a massive amount of data for the most accurate predictions of when those containers can be picked up. Paired with the depth and quality of project44’s over-the-road data, we are the best equipped in the world to tell shippers when their freight will make it to the warehouse.

“On the front end of a transport, those same advanced algorithms are integrated with hyperaccurate vessel sailing schedules and detailed cargo rolling data to help the shipper select the best possible carrier and vessel booking to avoid the worst of the port congestion,” he said.

Visibility pioneer

Chicago-based project44 has been focused on providing hyperaccurate supply chain visibility since McCandless, the founder and former CEO of CarrierDirect, launched the company in 2014. Founded in 2012, Ocean Insights, headquartered in Germany, “pioneered ocean freight visibility by combining carrier data, live vessel tracking and sailing schedule data in one data-rich platform,” according to the acquisition announcement.