Cargo owners are usually among the first victims in a crisis. COVID-19 has taken that to another level, with shipments being delayed, blanked, subjected to demurrage, stranded, lost, dropped by importers, or stored at sea because of landside space constraints.
ESC Maritime Transport Manager and General Secretary of the Spanish Shippers’ Council Jordi Espin during his intervention at the World Ports Conference 2020, that took place on the 21 October, stressed the following issues:
- Importance of connection (numerous port pairs) to avoid concentration of flows in major ports with corresponding risk (disruption, congestion);
- Promotion of green investments in ports operations (handling) and infrastructure (green electricity at berth for calling ships, supply facilities of green fuels, multimodal infrastructure);
- Implementation of innovation technology (e.g., autonomous cranes, trucks, etc) and digitalization (e.g., CCS, seamless data flows with inland transport);
- Customer relationship between ports and cargo owners organised through many parties in between. Such type of cooperation lacks direct contact with the clients and affects understanding of the users’ real needs;
- The importance of the Global Shippers’ Alliance and European Shippers’ Council as the main agents in discussing trade barriers and identifying comparison items across the globe for transport and supply chain;
- Distance between real operations expectations combined with digitization.
To watch the webinar, please see here.