Alex Charvalias

Spire Maritime is recognizing extraordinary people in the maritime industry. We’re highlighting people working to achieve extraordinary tasks, break down barriers, and enable industry change, for the better.

Change is hard and changing an industry with a long history steeped in tradition is even harder. Meet Alex Charvalias: A husband and father of two children who is working, relentlessly to change maritime, for the better. This self professed ‘mountain guy’, is a creator, a problem-solver, and a person trying to let go and live in the moment. But he is also the Supply Chain Visibility Lead at MarineTraffic, a ship tracking and maritime analytics provider dedicated to leaving no waters uncharted. Alex’s efforts to digitize maritime and build more efficient and sustainable maritime operations makes him our most recent Maritime Star recipient.

We sat down with Alex and asked him a few personal questions to get to know this Maritime Star on a more personal level. Here’s a bit of that conversation:

Question: Where do you live?
Answer: Athens, Greece

Question: Recommend a place to eat at or visit in your city
Answer: ParkBench Restaurant or just a souvlaki from Kostas

Question: Who does your company help and how?
Answer: MarineTraffic is a ship tracking and maritime analytics provider dedicated to leaving no waters uncharted. It is driven by the desire to create effective tools and insights that everyone interested in the movements of ships or their cargo can use to shape a greener and more efficient future for the shipping industry.

Question: What do you do, and why do you do it?
Answer: I am leading MarineTraffic efforts as Supply Chain Visibility Lead, to make sea transportation of cargo more predictable and transparent. The end goal is to enable shippers to optimize their downstream supply chains, saving costs, environmental impact and providing better customer service. Our latest solution allows for container shipment tracking with predictive ETA to the final port, fusing AIS with Carrier’s Vessel Schedules and Track & Trace.

Question: What do you love about working in the Maritime industry?
Answer: I have a love and hate relationship with the industry. I love its people and their level of expertise, and I hate its innate resistance to change.

Question: What is your favorite ship type and why?
Answer: Container vessels. They are a tight network of nodes that move the world around.

Question: What is one change you would like to see happen in the Maritime industry?
Answer: More open data exchange and data standardization. So that we can all stop wasting resources in cleaning, unifying and ‘reverse engineering’ everything…

Thank you Alex!

A big thank you to Alex for taking the time to meet with us and for his extraordinary efforts to raise awareness about freight logistics. Your efforts truly make you a Maritime Star!

Learn more about Alex at LinkedIn and at MarineTraffic.

*The lie is: I am an avid sailor