Alexander Varvarenko

Alexander Varvarenko (born 1980, in Ventspils, Latvia) is a Belgian businessmen, founder and CEO of the Sea freight exchange and online freight platform SHIPNEXT, founder of the shipping company VARAMAR, social activist, co-founder of Odessa Business Club, organiser of the Annual Maritime Brokers’ Dinner as a regular international event by Ukrainian Maritime Club that he has also founded.
Biography.
Alexander was born in Latvia in 1980 in the family of Valentin Varvarenko - head of the Ventspils Port and known for his long-term career in Latvia, Russian and Belgian Ports, and Lidiya Varvarenko - a piano teacher - the family often had to move. Subsequently, the family moved to Belgium in 1990. In 1996, he moved again, but this time to Odesa (Ukraine). The city remained crucial for Alexander because as he received his higher education and, after having studied in UK and worked in Belgium, started his own business there in 2009.
Career.
In 2002 Alexander Varvarenko became an intern at the shipping company VOCS (Van Omeren Clipper Steel) that operates maritime transport between Europe and the USA. Then he switched to Bruges to the Belgian representative office - FLAMAR (Zeebrugge) - of the Danish company CEC Lines based in Copenhagen. In 2004 he became the head of the Freight Department.
Starting from 2006 Alexander Varvarenko worked as the director of the shipping company Kaalbye Projects, Ukraine, Odesa.
In 2009 he founded the shipping company VARAMAR. Within the ten years of company’s existence they opened offices in Vancouver, Hamburg, Genoa, Limassol and Dubai. VARAMAR became the first company that started to use Bitcoin in freight payments.
In 2014 Alexander Varvarenko became a partner at the touristic company INSKY.
In 2015 he cofounded MYCO, a social network for business owners and directors.
In 2016 Alexander Varvarenko founded SHIPNEXT – a digital Shipping Marketplace and Freight Management Platform for international supply chain, currently used by over 3200 international companies. The company aims to promote processes of digitalization and automation in maritime transportation and supply chain, with the help of Natural Language Processing, machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data Analysis. It improves transparency as well as lowers supply chain participant costs. Uses technologies based on blockchain principles, which is the basis for the introduction of the electronic bill of lading. In 2019 SHIPNEXT got prizes by Seatrade Awards (London) and Global Grain (Geneva) in the field of digital technologies for transport and maritime transportation.
In 2019 SHIPNEXT has announced a partnership with Betatron from Hong Kong and was admitted into a Scale-up program in both Hong Kong - Cyberport - as well as Singapore - PortXL.
Activities.
Between 2015 and 2019 Alexander Varvarenko was invited as a speaker to more than 120 conferences around the world. He reported on the topic “Digitalization in Transportation and Supply Chain”. He spoke at the conferences in Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE, India, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Germany, Netherland, Belgium, Great Britain, USA, Denmark, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Spain, etc. In 2019 Alexander Varvarenko gave a talk at the session of the United Nations Organization (UNO-UNCTAD), Switzerland, Geneva.
Charity.
For many years Alexander Varvarenko supports charity organizations and social initiatives, projects in several children organizations. He initiated reconstruction of the sculptures on the Lutskyi house facade (Odesa) that had been lost during the Soviet time.
Family.
Alexander Varvarenko is married and has four children. His wife – Anna Varvarenko – composer, founder of “KISS chocolaterie”, social activist. «KISS chocolaterie» - chocolaterie where Belgian chocolate handmade sweets were made; closed in early 2019.