How TMA Bulk turns voyage planning into commercial optimisation

TMA Bulk operates from Hamburg with a young and commercially minded team focused on Handymax bulk carriers. The company runs a mix of chartered and operated vessels and manages a pool, while also engaging in a parceling business that assembles multiple cargoes into single voyages. This combination of parcelling, pool management, and commercial operation makes their setup unusual in the dry bulk sector – and also demands a high degree of coordination between operations, commercial, and technical teams.

As Ship Performance and Efficiency Manager, Varun Kumar's role spans those boundaries. “I look at the full commercial and operational chain,” he says. “From the moment a voyage is fixed, through cargo preparation and execution, to claims and feedback – it’s all connected. Each step influences efficiency.”

For Varun, the concept of efficiency extends well beyond fuel or energy. “I wouldn’t really call it fuel optimisation anymore,” he says. “It’s commercial optimisation. It’s about understanding how every choice – how much cargo we lift, how we route the vessel, how we manage delays or claims – affects the commercial outcome.”

This perspective has shaped how TMA Bulk approaches decarbonisation and compliance. “Environmental regulations made companies start looking at their operations more closely,” Varun explains. “The surprising result is that compliance actually improves business. Once you identify what was being left as waste – in time, fuel, or process – it becomes clear that optimisation is not a cost. It can finance itself.”

TMA Bulk has been working with ZeroNorth for the past three years, using the company’s Voyage Optimisation software. “We wanted a system that lets us do the optimisation ourselves,” Varun says. “The software is the expert. We generate the plan, the master reviews it from a safety perspective, and together we decide. That’s how you keep the knowledge with the operator rather than outsourcing it.”

According to Varun, that autonomy is key. “ZeroNorth stood out because it was built for people who are making day-to-day decisions,” he says. “Other systems still depend on external routing or weather experts. Here, the operator has control – and that’s what makes it practical.”

He points to a recent example: a vessel departing from Ontario had initially been routed around the Cape of Good Hope. “That’s the traditional route,” Varun says. “But we used the optimisation system to test an alternative through the Panama Canal. With updated data on congestion, timing, and canal fees, we found that Panama made better commercial sense. Within a few hours, we re-routed the vessel, adjusted the port rotation, and changed the entire voyage plan. Without the system, that process would have taken days.”

For Varun, examples like this underline how digital tools are becoming part of everyday commercial decision-making rather than separate from it. “With better data, you can constantly refine how you trade and operate,” he says. “That’s the direction we’re going in – more interaction, more integration between data and decisions. Optimisation should be as intuitive as using Google Maps.”

“The best outcome,” Varun says, “is when the operator and the master have a direct, informed conversation about what’s best for the voyage. When the people making the decisions have the right tools, optimisation becomes a natural part of good seamanship and good business.”