About

Our story

Tidetech was founded in 2008 by Roger Proctor and Penny Haire to develop operational forecast models for regions worldwide where tides and currents impact a range of marine activities and infrastructure. Our scientists, researchers and developers now make these data available to diverse customers via data service integration and customisation.

Our customers include large shipping companies, shipbuilding companies, multiple maritime software companies, recreational marine equipment and electronic chart producers, Apple Inc. and a major hydrographic office. We also have an excellent track record of supporting recreational and elite sailing, the America's Cup organisation and Olympic sailing teams.

Tidetech seeks to play a growing role in energy transition and transport decarbonisation. We already help our global shipping customers – servicing over 10,000 vessels – to reduce their emissions and improve fuel efficiency.

Our capabilities draw on strong scientific and maritime industry expertise spanning:

1. Development, validation, and operation of hydrodynamic tidal forecast models, including analysis of oceanographic

observations for model validation

2. Tidal analysis and calculation to produce predictions of tidal heights and currents from tidal constituents

3. Design and operation of reliable cloud-based systems for metocean dataset management and processing, and

4. Design and operation of metocean sevices, including APIs for gridded data, vector data, and Web Map Services.

Tidetech is privately owned, has ten full-time staff and is based in Hobart, Tasmania, a global centre for marine and Antarctic research.

Meet our team

We are oceanographers, data and systems specialists and sailors.

Dr Roger Proctor

Co-Founder and Science Director

Roger was the director of the Australian Ocean Data Network, hosted by the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), an Australian government research infrastructure program, between 2008 and 2018. Prior to joining IMOS he was based in the UK as program leader for the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (now National Oceanography Centre) strategic research program “Modelling and Observation Systems for Coastal Seas”. In this role he also acted as consultant to the British Olympic Sailing Team for the Olympics between 1988 and 2004. He holds a PhD from Liverpool University, UK and has authored more than 100 publications and reports. Roger has always had the belief that research products, generally paid for by taxpayers, have value to a much wider range of users than just the research community, and feels Tidetech is an excellent vehicle to enable this.

Penny Haire

Co-Founder and Managing Director

Penny has had a long career in the maritime industry, as a sail trainer and Chief Instructor for the Royal Yachting Association before founding Tidetech with Roger in 2008. Having grown up near Liverpool UK which has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, she has always been fascinated by tides. Her passion is to be able to make scientific research about weather and oceanography more accessible and usable for everyone in the maritime world and for Tidetech's data to be used to help reduce harmful emissions from shipping.

Other team members include talented oceanographers and specialist developers.

Interested in joining our team? Contact us