The maritime cluster, i.e. the marine industry with shipping and port operations, is an important employer both in Finland and internationally. The rapidly changing competitive environment is the key challenge for the sector and is caused by changes in the global business environment and continuous requirements in the maritime sector to develop new competence. Another challenge is the ageing of competent staff and their transition from working life.

The workforce in the maritime cluster has mainly either a commercial or technical basic education and short-term continuing training is not sufficiently available. The project aims to create a functioning higher education network for the needs of the maritime cluster. This network plans to offer a training of the extent of 30 to 60 ECTS credits. The training modules are planned on the basis of identified training needs of companies operating in the field.