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A flock? Farmers can now protect their chickens with automated laser drones. Japan is so keen on it that they’re subsidising farmers to implement it. 🤟

In This Open Letter

The maritime shipping industry has a unique problem that human divers battle to address – a R855bn market play here from Africa?

Just over a week ago, this Bloomberg headline caught our eye. A Singaporean/Chinese startup, Neptune Robotics, had raised a $52M (R890 million!) Series B round to expand its underwater ship-cleaning robots ops.

Who pays almost a billion Rand for robotic hull cleaners? Turns out the global shipping industry has a major issue with biofouling (microorganisms collecting on the boat’s hull), increasing drag and fuel costs by up to 30% or more. And keeping it under control is costing them around $50bn (R855 billion) per year.

The big need for clean hulls

But it goes deeper than that. See, worldwide, shipping is under pressure to reduce its carbon footprint and in 2023, the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) agency has put loads of legally binding regulations in place – including clauses on biofouling, where it’s going to inspect boats and grade them on Maritime greenhouse gas (GHG) levels.

Get graded too low, and they’ll fine you, revoke your license or ban you from shipping – sending the R6.3 trillion global maritime shipping industry into a spin.

How Neptune built it

Back to the startup: Neptune built a robot that can clean the hulls of ships faster and in graver weather than the normal methods (human divers scrubbing the hull). They started in 2018 as three founders through US hard-tech VC/accelerators SOSV HAX, running small-scale tests in China before going large-scale in Singapore in 2024 and signing deals with Japanese freighters in 2025.

They basically built tech to do it better than divers, created a Service-as-Operations model, charging on-demand cleanings and recurring care programmes, intending to sign deals with operators. Their value prop seems to be around the regulatory & ESG ROI; they tell companies they’ll save them money and help them get good grades and stay compliant.

Now for the big question…

Can this work here in SA?

Well, we’re sitting right on a key global shipping lane (Cape of Good Hope and Suez reroutes) and the IMO’s regulations are global, so they apply here, too. 

SA ports hosted about 9’200 vessels and 4.3 million 20-foot containers of cargo in 2024 (about a tenth of places like Singapore), but boats tend to stay slightly longer at SA ports (Durban, Richards Bay, Cape Town, Ngqura/Gqeberha) than most everywhere else, meaning there’s probably room to increase efficiency.

And don’t forget you have other busy ports further into Africa, too. Mombasa (Kenya) alone hosts about half the cargo vessels as all of SA, and places like Tanger Med (Morocco) see almost double the traffic of all of SA. 

So, who’s building a ship-cleaning robot?

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Every Friday, we pick an up-and-coming SA e-commerce store and feature it here for you to explore…

We’ve come a long way since SA icon David Kramer rolled onto TV sets in a pair of bright red vellies in 1983. And while the shoes themselves never left the farm, the mines or the dance floor, they’ve taken on a whole new life with Veldskoen.

They’re taking a shoe that’s always been tough enough for South African terrain and reworking it with colour, comfort and a global audience in mind. Every pair is handmade locally, instantly recognisable, and built to last.

Veldskoen started when Nick Dreyer and Ross Zondagh, unimpressed with SA’s 2016 Olympic kit, reimagined the iconic vellie into something proudly stylish.

Since then, they’ve stepped off the stoep and into boardrooms, airports, and city streets from Sandton to San Fran, and everywhere in between.

From Kramer’s red pair to today’s rainbow of reinventions, Veldskoen is bringing a little bit of 🇿🇦 heritage to the rest of the world, one step at a time.

🎁 Google's GenAI Gift. Google is giving its premium AI tools, Google AI Pro, free for a year to varsity students in six African countries, including South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, to turbocharge their tech skills. Very cool move.

📱 Tap To Pay Play. FNB customers who use Huawei can now make tap-to-pay payments thanks to its support of  Swoo Pay. Before, Huawei users were forced to use scan-to-pay services for contactless transactions, despite owning an NFC-capable device. Wow, hey.

🍗 KFC's Recipe Ruse. KFC SA promised a juicy secret recipe reveal, but instead “open-sourced” the blueprint for their “Add Hope” initiative with a hackathon they hope will inspire SA’s youth to build solutions for governance, fundraising and systems architecture to expand the campaign’s reach.

🌟 New Captain at JSE Helm. Valdene Reddy will step into the role of CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in April 2026, as current CEO Leila Fourie's 6-year term comes to an end when she retires. All the best, ladies.

🤖 RoboDash. DoorDash is rolling out Serve Robotics' sidewalk delivery bots in LA under a new multi-year deal to give its delivery model a high-tech twist. If you know anything about the mean streets of LA, this could get fun...

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you cloud services and solutions by Cloud on Demand, Africa-ready payroll & HR via Deel Local Payroll powered by PaySpace, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.

Yesterday, we showed you how The Awareness Company is adding intelligence to SA property management, asking how you’d misappropriate their HYDRA platform. Most want good coffee spots…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🅿️ Best parking spot for the shop (17%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧾 Shortest checkout queue in the centre (20%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📶 Strongest free Wi-Fi zones (and open plugs) (17%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍼 Kid-friendly areas that aren’t chaos o’clock (13%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ☕ Quietest coffee corners for a quick laptop sprint (33%)

No jobbies, no probbies…

💼 Business Development Consultant @ Outsourced CFO

🤝Chief Technology Officer @ OneDayOnly

☁️ Cloud Support Engineer @ Cloud on Demand

🤖 Commercial Director @ Plentify

🧮 Commercial Manager @ Outsourced CFO

🔎 Financial Analytics Team Lead @ Dataloop

🦋 Flutter Developer @ Sinov8

🌮 Full-Stack Developer @ The Awareness Company

🦖 Head of Sales @ OfferZen

🧱 Lead Engineer @ Syft Analytics

🐮 Multiple Senior Software Dev + 30 more roles @ Flash Group

🤓 Rockstar Developer @ TaxTim

😎 Sales Development Representative (SDR) @ Beeline

💎 Senior Account Executive @ Jem

🏗️ Senior Full-Stack Engineer @ Sociable

🎒 Software Engineer @ Bag Learning

🧑‍💻 Software Engineering Roles @ Octoco

🛠 Tool to Try: Just Copy lets you clone proven apps and launch custom versions in minutes.

💊 That’s Interesting: The world’s busiest pharmacy is at the Vatican City: tax-free and packed with rare meds, it serves locals (Italians) and tourists alike.

🐆 Next Level: Watch Brazil’s military police rescue an injured jaguar from the Rio Negro.

🎸 Hack: A deep dive into rock music history, decade by decade.

🛰 Wow Site: Where Is The ISS tracks the International Space Station in real time.

Hey, Renier here 👋, co-founder of The Open Letter.

I’ve spent 17 years in SA tech and seen hundreds of startups rise and fall. The ones that made it all had one thing in common: a strong community.

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