Nowcasting International signs €300k Canadian deal

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal page - Nov 16 2008

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Irish company Nowcasting International has signed a €300,000 deal with Canadian global energy giant Nexen to provide weather forecasting services.

Mark White, chief executive of Nowcasting International, said the three-year agreement would service Nexen operations in the North Sea.

‘‘We are providing them with high-resolution weather data, and detailed meteorological and oceanographic services,” he said. ‘‘Nexen has several producing and drilling assets in the North Sea that require accurate and detailed weather forecasting, to safely undertake operations and to maximise the use of its assets.

‘‘We do not just pump lots of weather information to it, we give it to Nexen using software installed on its computers, which are Irish-designed. This solution allows it to get answers to its questions and identify weather windows, taking into account wave heights, wind speed or current speed and direction.”

The deal was finalised following a competitive four-month tendering process, White said.

‘‘We have a senior sales executive based full-time in Aberdeen,” he said. ‘‘It was a relatively quick deal for us, but we had been introducing it to our technology over the last year.”


Nowcasting was established in 1999, with initial funding from Eircom Enterprise Fund, Shannon Development and Mayfair Venture Capital.

The company delivers weather information provided by partner companies to customers using its patented Nowcast Pro technology. Customers include ferry operators, navies, coastguards, offshore oil and gas operators, shipping companies and individual boat owners.

‘‘When we started out, we had to establish credibility, as we were up against people like Met Éireann and UK Met Office,” said White. ‘‘We did a deal with HM Customs and Excise in 2002 to switch from UK Met Office, which was a big breakthrough for us and helped us to get current customers like BT and Chevron.”

Nowcasting employs 16 staff at offices in Ennis and turned over €3million in 2007. White said an agreement signed in 2003 with US company Wilkens Weather Technologies had enabled it to offer a competitive service to oil and gas companies in the North Sea.

‘‘Together, we have established a North Sea weather centre in Aberdeen,” he said. ‘‘We have four forecasters there providing a 24-7 service, which gives us a very strong position to compete with the likes of UK Met Office for this kind of business.”

Nowcasting’s partnerships with international weather data suppliers enable it to service customers in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, the Mediterranean, west Africa and Russia, White said.

The company recently launched online consumer forecasting service Askmoby.com, which won the Silver Award for Most Innovative Business Model at the Mobile Search Awards 2008, held in London last month.

‘‘It allows users on mobile phones and PCs hour-by-hour weather forecast for anywhere in Europe for a particular activity,” said White. ‘‘They get a free forecast, and a very specific ad focused on the activity and weather they will get.”