The $76B Drag on Global Trade: How Underwater Robots Are Fixing It

Every year, the global shipping industry burns an extra $76 billion in fuel—not because ships are traveling farther, but because they’re unknowingly traveling heavier.

The culprit is biofouling: a thick, stubborn layer of barnacles, slime, and sea grass that clings to ship hulls and quietly increases drag. The more drag a vessel faces, the more fuel it burns just to maintain its usual speed.

Most people will never see this problem. But for port operators, ship owners, insurers, and regulators, biofouling is a massive efficiency leak—and one of the shipping sector’s biggest hidden climate challenges.

Now, a new class of underwater robots is beginning to change that.

In Episode 2 of Building Blocks: Living Machines, we dive into the world of Neptune Robotics, a startup using AI-powered underwater robots to clean ship hulls so vessels burn less fuel and emit less carbon.

Granite Asia senior managing partner Jixun Foo, who also sits on the board of PSA International, joins the conversation to explain why this matters—and why Neptune represents one of Asia’s most impressive deep-tech build-outs.

The Hidden Climate Problem Beneath Every Vessel

When barnacles accumulate on a hull, friction increases. When friction increases, fuel consumption spikes—dramatically.

Founder and CEO Elizabeth Chen frames it simply: “It’s like swimming underwater wearing a thick blanket.”

A single ship can begin suffering efficiency losses within months of leaving dry dock. Multiply that across the 100,000+ vessels in the global fleet, and the numbers grow staggering:

• $76 billion in bunker fuel wasted annually
• Millions of tonnes of avoidable CO₂
• Higher operational risk, corrosion, and speed loss
• Greater spread of invasive species across ecosystems

Yet in major ports like Shanghai—home to some of the world’s densest traffic and murkiest waters—human divers can’t work safely enough to remove biofouling at scale. For decades, the industry has simply accepted the losses.

The Two-Year Grind: 750 Sea Trials, 749 Failures

Before Neptune Robotics earned its first dollar, the team endured a two-year stretch of nonstop sea trials—750 real-world deployments, often multiple failures every week.

Each trial ran up to 20 hours, in cold, zero-visibility waters with high currents and unpredictable conditions.

As Elizabeth recalls: “We failed 749 times before our robot worked.”

But every failure taught the team something vital:

• how to maintain adhesion on curved steel surfaces
• how to stabilise in strong currents
• how to see in murky water
• how to keep electronics alive under pressure
• how to navigate entirely by feel
• how to adapt to unpredictable marine conditions

These lessons couldn’t be simulated. They had to be lived. And they became Neptune’s deepest moat.T

A New Industrial Layer for the Ocean

Neptune doesn’t sell robots. It sells robotic cleaning as a service—a model that compounds learning over time.

Each run collects environmental data.
Each dataset strengthens Neptune’s AI models.
Each simulation trains robots to handle more edge cases.
Each port unlocked expands the global footprint.

The long-term roadmap is even more ambitious:

• automated underwater hull inspections
• corrosion and micro-crack monitoring
• real-time structural diagnostics
• precision fuel-optimization
• autonomous maintenance tasks
• port-wide robotic operating systems

As Jixun says: “There’s massive headroom for growth—new ports, new regions, and eventually full automation.”
This isn’t just hull cleaning. It’s the foundation of ocean automation.

Why This Matters
Biofouling may sound obscure, but its ripple effects are enormous. It’s one of the most efficient climate interventions available—and until now, one of the least solvable.

With robotics, AI, and a team willing to endure 749 failures, that’s finally changing.

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Listen to Episode 2 — “Robots Beneath the Waves”

Available on:
– Apple Podcasts (search Building Blocks Granite Asia)
– Spotify