Pavle — the in-house operations platform that runs fleet, terminal, agency, and client dashboards as one operating system. Leadership or co-leadership in five Horizon Europe research consortia. And the Remote Piloting Innovation Centrum in Galați, in partnership with Seafar.
Pavle is the internal name for Trading Line's operations platform — a system designed and built in-house since 2011, and continuously evolved since. It integrates fleet position and voyage data, cargo chartering and execution, terminal operations at Dana PL3, agency workflows, customs and documentation, crew management, maintenance scheduling, and client-facing dashboards into a single operational surface. It is the reason Trading Line can do one month of planning in an afternoon — and the reason the 24/7 ops desk can answer the phone at three in the morning knowing the state of every vessel in the fleet.
The architectural blueprint for Pavle was presented publicly for the first time at the European Commission's Digital Transport Days in Helsinki in October 2019, where Paul Ivanov was invited by DG MOVE Unit D3 — Ports and Inland Navigation — to speak alongside Rijkswaterstaat, Contargo, the Port of Switzerland, Hamburg Port Consulting, and ABB Finland. His topic on the official agenda: the ship operator's perspective on digitalisation, including big data, geofencing, and integration via ECDIS and 3G/4G networks. Almost everything that now runs inside Pavle traces directly back to the design decisions made in that presentation — and to the live demonstration at RIS Week Liège one month later.
Pavle is not a product Trading Line sells. It is the operational edge that lets a forty-hull fleet be run with the overhead of a ten-hull fleet — and the foundation on which remote piloting, AI-assisted dispatching, and digital twin simulation are now being deployed.
Trading Line is an active participant in five Horizon Europe inland waterway research consortia — a level of European research involvement unmatched by any other Romanian Danube operator.
Horizon Europe Innovation Action under the CL5-2026-05-D5-11 "Ports of the Future" call. Coordinator: University of the Aegean (Prof. Athena Roumboutsos). Academic lead for the Lower Danube case: Dr. Valentin Carlan, University of Antwerp. A thirty-one-partner consortium covering Seafar, Port of Seville, Port of Ravenna, NSPF, Ruse, Patras, CMA CGM Malta Terminal, Honeywell, Aarhus University, Smart4.0, TIC4.0, University of Lille, Port of Galați, and others. Trading Line is the only Romanian armator in the consortium, with the Romanian Ministry of Transport as public partner. Project Manager on the Trading Line side: Alexandra Moldovan.
Horizon Europe project on seamless transport mobility and freight. Trading Line presented the overall concept, scope, and objectives of the SEAMLESS Project at the Transport Research Arena (TRA) — one of the flagship European research events on transport.
Horizon Europe consortium on European freight flow optimisation and multimodal coordination. Trading Line participates as an inland waterway operator bringing the Lower Danube perspective into the broader multimodal analysis.
Horizon Europe project focused on the intersection of autonomous navigation and waterborne transport, with contributions from the remote piloting research stream that underpins the Trading Line Galați Innovation Centrum.
Horizon Europe consortium on Industry 5.0 perspectives applied to the shipping and logistics sector. Brings together academic institutions, technology providers, and active operators to map the transition from legacy operations to integrated human-centred and technology-driven workflows.
The Remote Piloting Innovation Centrum in Galați is the centrepiece of Trading Line's long-term digital and autonomy roadmap. The Centrum is planned as a forty-million-euro state-of-the-art facility with a wave-facade architecture echoing the river itself, up to one hundred pilot consoles, 4D simulator chairs for multi-participant training, and a Starlink ground station providing the low-latency satellite backbone required for shore-to-ship command and control.
Eight Trading Line vessels — Alja, Alfa Mea, Libero, Avenir, Duricha, Navitas, Petran, and Temptation — are planned for phased conversion with Seafar onboard hardware, bringing them under the remote control of the Centrum's shore-based crews. The Romanian Ministry of Transport has formally approved Trading Line to develop, test, and sail remote-piloted vessels on the Danube. Construction and conversion proceeds in parallel with the Fast Danube 2 infrastructure works, targeting full operational alignment by 2028.
Trading Line welcomes research collaboration from European universities, institutional research centres, and technology partners working on inland waterway digitalisation, remote piloting, autonomous navigation, and green propulsion.
