Swedish industrial group Alfa Laval has agreed to buy NAVTOR, a Norwegian maritime software company, for SEK 6.85bn (about $700m) in cash. The deal makes Alfa Laval a much bigger player in digital tools for shipping.
Deal at a glance
- Price: SEK 6.85bn (about $700m), all cash
- Closing: expected in the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals
- Funding: Alfa Laval’s own cash and existing financing programmes
- Size of NAVTOR: about 400 staff in 13 offices, customers in more than 90 countries, and expected revenue of about $194m this year
Alfa Laval called it one of the most significant deals in its history.
Building a digital fleet platform
NAVTOR will join Alfa Laval’s Ocean Division. Its software will be combined with StormGeo, the weather routing and voyage optimisation company Alfa Laval bought in 2021, and Portchain, which StormGeo acquired last week. Portchain links shipping lines with more than 200 container terminals that handle over 40% of global terminal capacity.
Together, the three are meant to offer one package covering navigation, vessel performance, voyage optimisation and port operations, so that ship speed and arrival times can adjust to changing berth availability.
About NAVTOR
Founded in Egersund, Norway, in 2011, NAVTOR started in electronic navigation and grew into wider ship-to-shore software: voyage planning, fleet monitoring, vessel performance, digital logbooks and onboard data. US investor Accel-KKR took a majority stake in 2020. NAVTOR later bought Tres Solutions and Ingenium Marine and combined with Voyager Worldwide in 2023, at which point its technology served about 18,000 ships.
Compliance issue
Alfa Laval disclosed that an internal review at NAVTOR found unspecified compliance matters, and that NAVTOR has tightened its controls in response. Alfa Laval said it has arranged protection against liabilities from before the acquisition and expects the issues to be resolved.
Based on reporting by Splash247, 6 November 2026.
Photo: Representative image: a container ship. Aah-Yeah / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
