Page 16: of Marine News Magazine (September 2025)

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Digitalization

OpenTug CEO Jason Aristides

OpenTug’s BargeOS

Real-Time Visibility, Predictive

Intelligence to O&G Barge Logistics

The tow and barge industry is a conservative industry built on a traditional way of doing things.

But times are changing, and the need for digital solutions to help track and verify cargoes – particularly in the high-value energy market – is becoming mandatory. The upside: gains in operational ef? ciency are real and measurable too, for both the transportation company and the shipper, as Jason Aristides, Founder and CEO, OpenTug, discusses in a recent interview.

n the competitive world of offshore energy logistics, as-a-service (SaaS) provider. Its ? agship solution, BargeOS, where the value of a single shipment can stretch into now serves as an operating system for barge logistics, en- the tens of millions, ef? ciency, transparency, and pre- abling companies to quote, schedule, track, and reconcile

Idictability are paramount. Jason Aristides, founder and barge voyages in a single digital platform.

CEO of OpenTug, believes the barge sector, long ham- pered by manual processes and limited data visibility, is Mind the [Visibility] Gap overdue for a digital revolution. Unlike tugboats, barges in the U.S. are not covered by

Founded out of Aristides’ ? rsthand experience at Foss AIS requirements, making it dif? cult for shippers to know

Maritime, OpenTug began as a marketplace platform for where their cargo is in real time. For the oil and gas sector barge transport before pivoting into a full-scale software- — where high-value liquid cargo demands absolute preci-

All images courtesy OpenTug 16 | MN September 2025