Softmar Take control of your commercial chartering and vessel operations.

Discover what ION can do for you

About Softmar

Simplify the full chartering, operations, and risk management needs of your shipping organization. Employ a comprehensive voyage estimator to optimize vessel and cargo planning. Make informed and proactive decisions to streamline day-to-day operations and protect profitability.

Why Softmar

In today’s volatile marketplace, complete transparency and fast access to information is the difference between sailing and sinking. With 90 percent of the world’s traded goods transported by sea, the ability for ship owners, operators, and charterers to control the cost and risk of transporting freight is key to profit optimization. Softmar empowers insightful decision making and automates back-office processes to reduce your operational costs and increase your profitability.

  • Improve chartering decisions

  • Increase operator productivity

  • Track your vessels

  • Streamline business processes

  • Manage enterprise risk

  • Gain operational transparency

Key features

  • Simplify ocean transportation

    • Manage straight-through commercial shipping activities for basic to complex bulk commodities.

    • Maintain full control of vessel operations throughout the entire voyage.

    • Manage hire and freight payments, invoicing, laytime calculations, and port disbursements in one comprehensive platform.

    Simplify ocean transportation
  • Take advantage of leading voyage estimation

    • Quickly assess bulk freight opportunities on a single screen for improved decision making.

    • Gain iron clad control of your commercial vessel operations.

    • Locate your vessels at any time with an advanced vessel tracking management system.

  • Translate risks into opportunities

    • Analyze positions of vessels, Freight Forward Agreements (FFAs), Contract of Affreightments (COAs), cargo bookings, cargo relets, and options.

    • Maintain a clear view of your physical and derivative positions’ exposure and mark-to-market valuation.

    • Gain full control of your freight risk position.

Enhance your solution with optional value-added modules

Unlike other shipping management solutions, Softmar is designed for shipping owners, operators, charterers, and commodity traders. Softmar’s modular structure allows the solution to be tailored to fit your business’ unique requirements. With integration to any of ION’s commodity trading and risk management (CTRM) solutions, Softmar eliminates the need for manually exchanging requirements and execution information between the trading and shipping departments.

  • Chartering manager

    Quickly assess freight opportunities and quote freight accurately with Softmar’s comprehensive Voyage Estimator. Calculate voyage duration, voyage results, Time Charter Equivalent (TCE), and Arrival Pilot Station (APS) when you need to on a web-based platform.

  • Vessel management

    Maintain technical and commercial vessel descriptions and catalog physical details including speed, bunker, and consumption. Track vessel commercial details like dates of purchases and sales.

  • Voyage management

    Perform post-fixture actions in a real-time environment where any change of data will automatically adjust the current voyage, following voyages, and next open position or redelivery of the vessel.

  • ION CTRM solution integration

    Integrate Softmar with any ION CTRM solution to manage straight-through commercial shipping activities. Cargo transport requirements will flow seamlessly into Softmar, with cost and other information flowing back to the ION CTRM solution.​

  • ION Cloud

    Lower your total cost of ownership and modernize your technology to optimize your operations and empower your business. Secure your data with ION’s multi-layered, trusted security stack.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Why do shippers need a commercial chartering and vessel operations solution?

    A complete vessel operations solution like Softmar enables the commercial maritime community to make more informed and proactive decisions, streamline day-to-day operations, and protect profits by providing fast access to actionable information.

Related products

  • Allegro

    A customizable, industry-leading CTRM for utilities and energy companies.

  • Aspect

    A multi-tenant, SaaS CTRM for liquid hydrocarbons and metals traders moving off spreadsheets.

  • Openlink

    A comprehensive, multi-commodity CTRM for industry leaders operating at scale.

  • RightAngle

    A CTRM with robust scheduling and logistics capabilities for liquid hydrocarbon companies.

  • TriplePoint

    An out-of-the-box, multi-commodity CTRM with configurable functionality.

Latest Commodities news

View all »

ION launches Carbon Zero for trading and managing carbon credits and environmental certificates

22 May 2023
London – 22 May 2023: ION, a leading provider of trading, risk, and ...

ION Commodities leads multiple categories in 2023 Energy Risk Software Rankings

30 March 2023
LONDON – 30 March 2023: ION Commodities, a leading provider of energy and ...

ION Commodities releases Allegro v22

16 March 2023
ION’s latest innovation enables greater success for the Allegro user community. ION Commodities ...