Weathernews Inc. (Chiba, Japan; Chihito Kusabiraki/CEO) is proud to announce the establishment of our new Weathernews Greece Branch in Athens. This will be our seventeenth overseas marketing office, this time in a country known as home to many commercial vessel owners. Accepting changes in the state of the entire shipping industry in recent years, the needs are increasing in the vessel owner and management market for countermeasures against environment regulations for more efficient emissions planning, and safe voyage support that can handle the high volume of data from vessels thanks to the spread of shipboard broadband.
In the last thirty years since this company’s founding, Weathernews has been providing service that supports safe and cost effective voyages focusing on shipping companies who operate vessels chartered from vessel owners. Applying our experience and knowledge here until now, we will begin development of new service that meets the needs of vessel owners, expanding from our company’s flagship Optimum Ship Routeing Service.
We held a seminar in Athens about new service developments for ship owners on October 12th,. The seminar was attended by eighty people from fifty companies from the ship holding and management industry in Greece and beyond. From the lively discussions at this seminar, we got to hear about the things that are at the height of their concerns.

Seminar for Vessel Owners and Followed Opening Ceremony with Resident Office Staff
Over eighty people attended the first seminar Weathernews has ever held in Athens for ship owners. Following the previous market environment over the last few years, opinions were exchanged about new service developments for its future. Weathernews could confirm their expectations for our new service developments from the many participants and content of their questions. After the seminar, we hosted an opening ceremony for our new Weathernews Greece Branch graced by the presence of the current Japanese ambassador in residence to Greece, His Excellency Masuo Nishibayashi who gave a complimentary address to Weathernews and the many other parties from the shipping industry in attendance at the ceremony.

“Japan and Greece have longstanding and wonderful relations in shipping industry. It was in 1952 when a Greek ship owner purchased a very first tanker ever built by Japanese ship builder. Why are Japanese-made ships so popular in Greece? Japanese shipbuilders and machinery makers are proud of the high-tech qualities of their products, which meet the global needs of eco-friendliness. Their custom services have a reputation of excellence, as well. I have to emphasize that Weathernews service also seeks for eco-friendliness.  For example Weathernews service provides ship operators with information on the best route to save fuel expenses. Anyhow, I would like to highly recommend many of you to utilize meteorological information service given by Weathernews. I sincerely hope that the new operation conducted by Weathernews Greece will offer an excellent opportunity to further strengthen business ties between Japan and Greece.”

During the opening ceremony, we connected to our global operations centers in Oklahoma (United States), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Chiba (Japan) in a live simulcast introducing the floor staff who are providing forecasts and service advisory to Weathernews customers around the world 24/7.

Weathernews also got to hear the valuable opinions and requirements of our customers at the seminar and opening ceremony, and are going to apply this to developing new service menu for ship owners.

◆Weathernews Greece Branch
　Address：3 Irodotou Str., 18538, Piraeus, Greece

Please click here to get PDF