Z-Joule
- argyris93
- Dec 9, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Strategic Support for the Maritime Fuel Transition
revision 26 Jan 2026 Exit Strategy. Added "European OEMs"
Mission
Build a professional, modern software stack that helps marine-transport stakeholders make better, faster decisions.
Problem
Digitalization in shipping has focused on operations. Today’s core challenges are strategic: navigating the fuel transition amid overlapping regulations and volatile fuel economics. Owners, operators, fuel suppliers, brokers, and lenders need robust tools to plan and commit—not spreadsheets.
Solution
The complexity at the intersection of half a dozen new regulations (CII, ETS, FEUM, NZF, SECAs, UK-ETS, etc) plus uncertain fuel price and availability leads to a truly complex optimization problem. There is no credible way to solve these problems on a spreadsheet. We created a proper software stack, with a world-class optimization back-end, that can be deployed to the web or across the enterprise.
click images to expand
Market Opportunity
Market size in number of customers:
Brokerage: 10-20
Shipping Finance: 10-20
Vessel owners: 100-1000
Vessel operators: 100-1000
Fuel suppliers: 10-100
Target customers:
We are currently in commercial conversations with fuel suppliers, brokers, and OEMs.
Go-to-Market Strategy
Founder-led outreach to sophisticated stakeholders who recognize the strategic impact of compliance optimization and fuel-transition planning.
Exit Strategy
We have received interest for investment/ full acquisition from top-5 brokers and European OEMs. We are in talks with a major supplier of bunker optimization software (with operational approach) as well as ETS management providers.
Traction
KPIs: pre-revenue. Still piloting.
Milestones achieved: Software is in production. We have held trials with a top-5 oil major.
Business Model
We operate a SaaS model. License prices are available only confidentially.
Pre-revenue.
Most costs are related to software development, plus smaller amounts for cloud and third-party software.
Team
Fernando Alvarez has a PhD in optimization of maritime transport. He was co-founder and CTO of BunkerMetric, which was sold to AlfaLaval (StormGeo subsidiary) in 2022. Fernando has been working in the shipping fuel transition since 2013, and more generally with shipping optimization since 2008. He is based in Oslo, with a wide network of contacts in the shipping and fuels segments.
Funding
Z-Joule is are bootstrapped by the founder.
Contact Information
Fernando Alvarez, PhD
T: +47 90 40 63 53
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