Turning a green shipping concept into an investable programme

Overview

An early-stage maritime technology venture was exploring a genuinely different approach to sustainable shipping. The insight was simple but commercially sharp: modern cargo vessels were already travelling at speeds historically achieved by sail, because the economics of slower journeys had overtaken the cost of extra time at sea. That raised the question of whether wind propulsion could be made commercially viable again, not by retrofitting existing ships, but through a dedicated kite-powered tug system that worked within established port and shipping lane operations.

The concept was ambitious and the technical uncertainty significant, which meant securing early-stage funding required demonstrating a structured, defensible pathway through the unknowns, not just the strength of the idea.

The Challenge

Retrofitting existing vessels with sail technology was commercially difficult: any modification required dry dock time, taking ships out of service and off revenue. The tug-based model avoided that but introduced its own set of engineering challenges: propulsion force at scale, aerodynamic efficiency, multi-kite interference, deployment mechanisms, automation, and operator dependency.

Without a clear view of which uncertainties carried the most risk, and what evidence would be needed to resolve them, development activity risked becoming unfocused. For investors and funding bodies, a compelling concept without a credible pathway is not enough.

Solution Approach

Working alongside the founder and engineering lead, NuPace’s first task was to understand the shape of the uncertainty: not just what was unknown, but which unknowns carried the most weight commercially and which, if left unresolved, would be the ones investors and funding bodies would push hardest on.

That picture reordered the development agenda. A Data Quality Objectives methodology was used to decompose the concept into its functional components, map the critical technical unknowns, and link each directly to investment and delivery risk. The result was a development sequence built around what mattered most, not what was most accessible. Structured workshops worked through the key engineering questions systematically: what decisions would need to be made, what information was required to make them, and how that information could be obtained.

What emerged was a phased technology development roadmap that gave the programme a clear internal logic: each phase reducing the uncertainties that stood between the current concept and a fundable proposition. That structure also made the external case. A roadmap built around risk reduction, with evidence requirements defined at each stage, gave funding bodies exactly the kind of credible pathway a compelling concept alone cannot provide.

Outcome and Impact

The roadmap became the foundation for a successful government maritime innovation funding application, securing approximately £1M in combined project value and grant support.

The programme attracted additional private investment and early industry attention, including coverage in sector press. It progressed into IP and prototype development, including patented concepts for kite deployment and control systems and early-stage sail and vessel design work. A technically ambitious concept had a funded development programme behind it and a credible path from idea to investable proposition.