NAPA
NAPA is a Finnish maritime software house founded in 1989, serving shipyards, owners and operators with ship design and fleet operations tools. Its recent AI layer adds natural-language permit-to-work analytics and AI-assisted cargo loading.
What is NAPA?
NAPA is the maritime software and data services business of Napa Ltd (Napa Oy), a Helsinki company entered in the Finnish trade register on 27 December 1989 under business ID 0775681-2. It counts 230 experts across offices in ten countries - Finland, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, India, Romania, the United States, Germany and Greece - with agents in Turkey, the Middle East and Indonesia. The portfolio has two halves. Ship Design is a 3D platform that NAPA presents as Developed by Naval Architects, for Naval Architects, covering hull forms and hydrodynamics, hydrostatics and stability, structure and collaborative review through NAPA Designer, NAPA, NAPA Engineer, NAPA Drafting and NAPA Viewer. Ship Operations covers safety, compliance and performance: NAPA Stability, NAPA Emergency Computer, NAPA Logbook, NAPA Permit to Work, NAPA Checklist (launched 11 August 2026), NAPA Fleet Intelligence, NAPA Voyage Optimization and ClassNK-NAPA GREEN. NAPA Fleet Intelligence is the shore-side hub, a modular cloud platform that, in NAPA's words, brings together safety, compliance, technical, and performance data into a single, modular cloud platform, organised in five families: Fleet Monitoring, Regulatory Compliance, Nautical Safety, Planning and Optimization, and Analysis and Insights. It adapts to how instrumented a vessel is, working from AIS alone (55,000 conventional vessels), from manual noon reports through the NAPA Onboard Reporting Tool, or from automated high-frequency signal data. AI is a recent and deliberately narrow layer. The Permit to Work Dashboard adds a natural-language interface, described by NAPA as one of the first in maritime safety software, live and adopted by Virgin Voyages and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. A multi-year AI roadmap points next to anomaly detection in NAPA Logbook and shore-side Voyage Reporting, then to an onboard extension. Customer results claimed by NAPA include 2,000 hours saved per vessel per year and a 14% lower administrative workload at Anthony Veder, 3-10% fuel savings with rotor sails at IINO Lines, and cargo planning cut from 1-1.5 hours to 10-15 minutes at Stena Line. NAPA holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (Bureau Veritas, certificate FI010360, expiring 22 February 2028, eight sites) and ISO 9001:2015 (DNV, certificate 132438-2013-AQ-FIN-FINAS, valid 13 March 2025 to 12 March 2028, nine sites). The company was acquired by ClassNK (Nippon Kaiji Kyokai, Japan), announced on 18 March 2014, and said at the time it would keep its neutrality towards all stakeholders.
What it does
- Query fleet-wide permit-to-work data in plain English and generate interactive dashboards
- Digitise work permits and their approval chains on board
- Plan loading, cargo and ballast on board, with intact and damage stability checks
- Design and analyse hull forms and structures in 3D, with hydrostatics, stability and longitudinal strength calculations
- Monitor risk, predict flooding and support decision-making in an emergency
- Keep electronic logbooks and regulatory record books
- Automate EU MRV, IMO DCS, CII and FuelEU reporting, and optimise route and speed profile
When to use NAPA / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if NAPA is the right fit.
When to use NAPA
- Passenger fleet operators in cruise and ferry shipping: Virgin Voyages, Royal Caribbean, Carnival, the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, HX/Hurtigruten, Ponant and Stena Line are named customers.
- Merchant shipowners and managers in dry bulk, gas and tanker trades, with Anthony Veder, Neste, IINO Lines, Marubeni and Fugro cited by NAPA.
- Shipyards, naval architecture offices and naval defence programmes: Chantiers de l'Atlantique, VARD, SDARI, Nissen Kaiun and Naval Group, with dedicated navy and submarine pages.
- Shore-based fleet managers and safety officers who need fleet-wide visibility, working alongside the crews on board who file permits, logbook entries and loading plans.
- Compliance and sustainability teams reporting under EU MRV, IMO DCS, CII and FuelEU Maritime.
When not to use NAPA
- Buyers who need public pricing or self-service sign-up: there is no rate card, no free plan and no announced free trial, and every route runs through a sales contact and a demo.
- Teams hoping to run the shore-side Permit to Work module on its own: NAPA states it requires NAPA Permit to Work already installed on board the vessels.
- Anyone shopping for a general-purpose AI assistant: AI here is a feature inside one module of roughly ten NAPA products, not the product itself.
- Operators with no vessel data source, since fleet analytics depends on AIS, manual reports or automated signal data being available.
- Organisations outside the shipping and shipbuilding industry, where a niche maritime toolset has no purpose.
How to use NAPA
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Identify which half of the portfolio you need, Ship Design or Ship Operations, since there is no self-service path into the products.
- Use the site's calls to action - Contact experts, Talk to an expert, Book a demo - to reach the sales organisation.
- Book a live demo on the Safety Solutions demo page, choosing the expert matching your region and segment: EU, APAC and Middle East cruise, US and North America cruise, worldwide ferry and marine, or worldwide training.
- Agree and sign the framework contract, since the offer is sold under service agreements and subscriptions rather than from a rate card.
- Have the onboard systems installed and configured aboard (NAPA Stability, Emergency Computer, Logbook, Permit to Work), with hardware delivered from NAPA's warehouse and logistics centre in Kirkkonummi, Finland.
- Subscribe to the NAPA Fleet Intelligence modules relevant to your fleet, from the passenger or the merchant catalogue; the shore-side Permit to Work module requires NAPA Permit to Work already installed on board.
- Connect the data sources matching each vessel's instrumentation - AIS only, manual reports through the NAPA Onboard Reporting Tool, or automated high-frequency signal data - and any third-party platforms such as Inmarsat, Danelec, Furuno or ShipDC.
- Request NAPAnet access and register named user accounts: the Service is reserved to registered users and passwords cannot be shared.
- Train crews and shore teams through NAPA's course catalogue for stability, logbook, permit to work, checklist, emergency computer and fleet intelligence, plus Simwave e-learning.
- Sign in to the customer area, consult the documentation on docs.napa.fi behind Microsoft Entra authentication, and use the AI dashboard by describing the view you need in plain English, which NAPA states needs no technical support.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- More than 35 years in the field with a very large installed base: 17,000 users in over 60 countries and more than 3,000 vessels equipped with safety and efficiency solutions.
- Certifications of its own, named and numbered: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (Bureau Veritas, FI010360) and ISO 9001:2015 (DNV, 132438-2013-AQ-FIN-FINAS).
- An explicit privacy architecture for the AI: no training on operational data, chart logic applied client-side, and raw fleet data staying in the customer's environment.
- End-to-end coverage from the shipyard to the sea, with model continuity between design and operations.
- A modular platform that adapts to each vessel's level of instrumentation, from AIS alone up to automated signal data.
- Physical presence in ten countries plus a network of agents.
- Quantified, named customer cases rather than anonymous testimonials.
Cons
- No public pricing at all, which makes it impossible to position a budget without going through sales, and neither a free plan nor a free trial is announced.
- No public API documentation page: the API exists, but customer documentation on docs.napa.fi sits behind Microsoft Entra authentication.
- The site's own text still states ISO 27001:2013 while the downloadable certificate states ISO/IEC 27001:2022, so the pages have not been kept up to date.
- No published data processing agreement and no formalised subprocessor list, despite third parties being named in the privacy policy.
- Contractual liability capped at EUR 1,000 unless the framework agreement states otherwise, with the Service provided as is, without warranty, and NAPA disclaiming responsibility for the accuracy of purchased input data such as AIS and weather.
- A scattered and partly ageing contractual corpus, with general terms dated 2016, 2017 and 2021.
- AI still covers a narrow perimeter (permit-to-work analytics, AI-assisted loading in NAPA Stability), and the Google Play listing for the Logbook app returns a 404 while the iOS app remains maintained.
Pricing & Plans
NAPA publishes no price. There is no free plan and no free trial announced, and no entry-level price point or currency can be quoted: the site carries no pricing page anywhere in its complete page sitemap of 218 URLs, and no amount appears in any product or service page. The offer is sold under contract, governed by five separate contractual corpora, among them the NAPA Safety Solutions Terms and Conditions for Service Agreements and Subscriptions (2021) and the NAPA Shipping Solutions Service Agreements and Subscriptions; dedicated service agreement and invoicing pages exist but carry no figure. The only monetary amount stated anywhere on the site is a contractual liability cap of EUR 1,000, which bears no relation to price. Prospective customers must request a demonstration and a quotation from the sales organisation.
- NAPA Designer
- NAPA
- NAPA Engineer
- NAPA Drafting and NAPA Viewer.
- NAPA Stability
- NAPA Emergency Computer
- NAPA Logbook
- NAPA Permit to Work
- NAPA Checklist
- NAPA Fleet Intelligence
- NAPA Voyage Optimization and ClassNK-NAPA GREEN.
- NAPA Fleet Intelligence is subscribed module by module
- from two distinct catalogues
- one for passenger vessels and one for merchant vessels.
- Stability Monitor
- Logbook
- Analyzer
- Permit to Work
- Voyage Reporting
- Emergency
- Navigational Risk Monitoring
- Regulatory Reporting and Custom Reports.
- Voyage Optimization
- Fleet View
- Voyage Overview
- Technical Performance
- Charter Party
- FuelEU Compliance and Emission Compliance.
- No named or priced tier is published for any of these lines or modules
- each is quoted individually.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how NAPA handles your data.
GDPR overview
NAPA's privacy policy carries a section headed GDPR Compliance Statement, explicitly framed against Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and covering Napa Ltd and its subsidiaries. NAPA qualifies it: the statement is general, is not specified to any particular entity and is not a binding legal document between Napa Ltd and any entity. Announced rights are updating, rectifying, modifying and deleting personal data, with identity verification possible; requests go to privacy@napa.fi. Breaches are notified to affected entities within 72 hours. Personal data is stored primarily inside the EU, though it may be processed by an employee of a non-EU subsidiary; recruitment data handled by Teamtailor AB stays in the EU/EEA, in adequate countries, or with suppliers under binding agreements. Established in Finland, NAPA needs no Article 27 representative and designates none. No data protection officer is named and no DPA is published.
Who owns the data?
The Fleet Intelligence terms of service place title, ownership and all intellectual property rights in the Service, the NAPA software and its documentation with NAPA and/or its licensors; nothing transfers to the customer. Customers may not publish data or derived results outside the parties to the Main Agreement without NAPA's written consent, and the Main Agreement prevails in case of conflict. Part of the input data is purchased by NAPA (AIS, weather) and carries no accuracy warranty. Ownership of customer operational data is never stated: the privacy policy only says NAPA does not sell personal data, while the Permit to Work AI is described as leaving raw fleet data inside the customer's own environment.
Reuse rights
Reuse by the customer is constrained rather than free: data and derived results may not be published outside the parties to the Main Agreement without NAPA's written permission. On NAPA's side, the privacy policy lists the purposes of processing as delivering the Service, developing and improving it, communication, internal accounting, legal obligations, research and analysis, market studies and consent-based targeted marketing, resting on consent (which can be withdrawn), contractual necessity, legal obligation and legitimate interest. Recipients include need-to-know employees, subcontractors, external advisers, CRM, marketing and analytics providers cited as examples (Netsuite, Hubspot, Salesforce, Google Analytics) and public authorities on lawful request. Usage data covers activity duration, vessel types or routes analysed, vessel or port names, fuel quality and notification settings, alongside device data such as operating system, screen resolution, ISP or carrier, browser, language, time zone, mobile number and IP address; no payment card data is collected. In the Permit to Work AI, NAPA states the model is trained on the structure of permit data, not on operational data itself: a query generates chart logic that is applied client-side to live fleet data, so raw operational data does not pass through the AI layer.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
NAPA's privacy policy states that all personal data is primarily stored within the EU, while allowing any personal data to be processed by an employee of a Napa Ltd subsidiary outside the EU for the purposes listed in the policy. Processing is said to take place only on computers provided and managed by the company. Recruitment data handled through Teamtailor is stored and processed within the EU/EEA, in countries recognised as offering adequate protection, or with suppliers bound by binding agreements. NAPA states that its contracts with third-party platforms prohibit those providers from accessing or using the data for their own purposes without Napa Ltd's prior consent. No hosting country is named anywhere and the only region declared is the EU. Two limits deserve attention. First, the declaration concerns personal data: nothing on the site documents where fleet operational data is hosted, beyond the statement that the Permit to Work AI keeps raw fleet data within the customer's own environment. Second, an observed technical fact that NAPA does not declare: the web server resolves to 3.71.3.153, an Amazon EC2 instance in the eu-central-1 region, in Frankfurt, Germany.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting NAPA.
- Scope: the AI is a recent feature inside one module of roughly ten NAPA products, not the product itself. Reading NAPA as an AI assistant, or judging the whole portfolio by the Permit to Work dashboard, misrepresents what is being bought.
- Ownership: NAPA has belonged to ClassNK (Nippon Kaiji Kyokai, Japan) since the acquisition announced in March 2014, yet the current site mentions it nowhere; the publisher remains fully active, with products launched in May, June and August 2026.
- Certification version mismatch: the quality page and the information security policy state ISO 27001:2013, while the downloadable Bureau Veritas certificate states ISO/IEC 27001:2022. The certificate is the authoritative document; the site text is out of date.
- Badge confusion: the 'Strongest in Finland' AAA mark is a Suomen Asiakastieto credit rating, not a security or quality certification, and UN Global Compact participation since 9 January 2014 is a membership, not a certification.
- Identity spellings: 'Napa Oy' (trade register, whois, VIES, App Store), 'Napa Ltd' (legal notice, certificates, terms) and 'Napa Oy/Ltd' (contact page) designate the same company. The US address on the contact page in Fort Lauderdale also differs from the one on the ISO 27001 certificate in Weston: two sites of the same Napa Software USA LLC.
- Hosting claim: 'primarily stored within the EU' concerns personal data only. The web server itself resolves to an Amazon EC2 instance in Frankfurt, Germany, and nothing on the site states where fleet operational data lives.
- Contractual and transparency limits: the no-training statement explicitly covers only the Permit to Work AI dashboard, no data processing agreement or formal subprocessor list is published despite Netsuite, Hubspot, Salesforce, Google Analytics and Teamtailor being named, and liability is capped at EUR 1,000 unless the framework agreement says otherwise.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
High, at enterprise level. Adoption starts with a framework contract, named accounts and NAPAnet access on request. Onboard systems (Stability, Emergency Computer, Logbook, Permit to Work) must be installed and configured aboard, with hardware shipped from NAPA's Kirkkonummi logistics centre; the shore-side Permit to Work module requires NAPA Permit to Work already installed on the vessels, and the Logbook mobile app works only if the onboard Logbook system is configured for it. Data sources and third-party platforms must be connected. Certified training and onboard inductions are offered. The AI analytics itself, by contrast, is described as needing no technical support.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind NAPA
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is NAPA an AI tool?
What does the AI-powered Permit to Work Dashboard actually do?
Is my operational data used to train the model?
How much does NAPA cost?
Is there a free trial?
Does NAPA offer an API?
Is there a mobile app?
Which certifications does NAPA hold?
Where is the data hosted?
Who publishes NAPA?
Should you pick NAPA?
NAPA is an established maritime software house rather than an AI product. Napa Ltd has been building ship design and ship operations software from Helsinki since 1989, and today covers the whole vessel life cycle: 3D hull and structure design, onboard stability and loading, electronic logbooks and work permits, fleet analytics, regulatory reporting and voyage optimisation. That continuity between design and operations, combined with an installed base of 17,000 users in more than 60 countries and named customer cases with figures attached, is its clearest strength. Its own certifications are documented rather than merely claimed: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 from Bureau Veritas and ISO 9001:2015 from DNV, both with certificate numbers. The AI layer is real but young and narrow. The natural-language Permit to Work Dashboard, live since June 2026 and adopted by Virgin Voyages and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, is genuinely useful for safety and fleet teams who want to interrogate permit data without a report request, and its privacy architecture is stated openly: training on the structure of permit data, chart logic applied client-side, raw operational data kept out of the AI layer. Beyond that dashboard and AI-assisted loading in NAPA Stability, the announced roadmap - anomaly detection in NAPA Logbook and Voyage Reporting, then an onboard extension - is what remains to be watched. The main reservation is commercial opacity. There is no published price, no free plan, no free trial and no self-service entry point: every path leads to a demo and a contract, and the shore-side permit module needs the onboard system first. The audience is therefore clear: shipowners, cruise and ferry operators, shipyards, and safety and compliance teams already working at fleet scale. Outside that industry, the tool has no purpose.
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