Sharing is Caring — the Opening up of Shipping

It may be all the Teams or Zoom calls, or it could just be that we’re living in a new caring sharing age. Something is happening to shipping, and it is fundamentally shaping how the story of what is being done and how, is being told.

TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’

We are living in what the Chinese curse may well term, “interesting times”. From environmental pressures to a pandemic, through to good old-fashioned supply and demand logjams. Shipping is being squeezed, but instead of seeing that as a negative there are many companies taking it as a positive tipping point.

In pulling all the various threads of digitalisation into maritime informatics we are finally seeing an opening up of the shipping industry. Ship owners are starting to talk, and not just about how good they are and how bad everyone else is. No, this is about really talking. We’re in the midst of a corporate therapy session.

Of course, the past decade or so has been leading to this. We had the encouragement of Corporate and Social Responsibility, and mission statements, visions and all manner of means to get a message out. Now though, it seems that we’re seeing something else. Not talking because companies have to, but talking because they want to.

Which makes for something very different indeed. So, the times they are changin’ very, very quickly indeed. Some of this opening up is swaddled in the comfort blankets of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting, but there is far more to it than padding to pander to banks, insurers and investors.

TALKING THE TALK

What we are seeing is companies, even smaller family-run type shipping companies, seeing that now is the time to talk, to share, to show that they are no longer the secretive, shadowy businesses hiding behind brass plaques.

They are showing that they are innovators and have the drive, willingness, enthusiasm and passion to raise not just the profile of their company, but of the whole industry too.

It may come as a surprise, but it seems to be the new generation of Greek owners leading this charge. There hasn’t been this much surprising opening up in Athens since Aristotle got the belt of his toga caught on a door in the Plaka.

Suddenly we are seeing and hearing a renaissance in shipping. We are at the dawning of a very different look and feel to the industry. Where once there was some degree of cynicism and reticence, this is being replaced by innovation as a service. Owners who know that they will attract charterers by being on top of their game, not hiding under a rock.

A NEW GENERATION

The granddaughters and grandsons of venerable owners have come to the fore. Their degrees and MBAs from respected global institutions have taught them the value of data, the benefits of sharing and the raw power of communicating.

What we have then is an incredible heady mix of old school, pure tough, streetwise entrepreneurialism and this now having some edges softened with new approaches of technology, a desire to engage and a willingness to shine a spotlight on how things are being and should be done.

A new approach that I think is perfect for our times, as it allows legislation to become a tool of change and development. No longer are such companies happy to merely comply, and even begrudgingly at that. Now it is about excellence, about rising above the competition and winning business because you are the best, not just the cheapest.

Of course, price will always be a factor, but with technology has come openness in everything. Freight rates, chartering decisions, there will be price points and pains, but in the new ESG, sustainable, accountable, open world it is about the value, not merely the cost.

ADDING IT ALL UP

The value comes from relationships across the supply chain. Suddenly not every decision is solely about the one wet leg of the journey. The environmental pressures on everyone and the fact that companies have to be better at justifying their choices have opened up logistical opportunities.

It means that finally shipping is a part of the whole, not just a secretive, misunderstood and ignored bit of the middle. No longer can barrels of this, buckets of that, boxes of the other, be sent across the world with no mind paid to the why, what and how.

Shipping has been dragged into the supply chain as an equal partner. With increasingly equal responsibilities. Now, initially, that is frightening and something to be fought against. However, as tax havens, loopholes and secrecy are attacked it is the companies who use the opponent’s force to their own ends that will succeed.

These are the judoka of the shipping world. As they are grabbed, they pivot, bend and deflect. Using the momentum of change to propel themselves forward. As the old ways are no more, these companies are doubling down on their shipping expertise and using technology to boost it, to magnify and empower them. It is a very heady mix indeed, and the secret of potentially great success.

HOLY HOLISTICS

To see shipping companies, particularly smaller ones, using higher levels of transparency, predictability, and visibility to give them a competitive edge is great to see. This is maritime informatics as not just a business enabler, but a business winner.

If you have read my earlier posts, you will know that at the core of the maritime informatics concept is the fact that shipping is based on the interaction between different stakeholders. This is the maritime ecosystem, and massive benefits can be gain by leveraging and using all that each can bring to a voyage.

With digitalisation, we have the ways and means of sharing. This means that all parties can have a positive impact through improved integration. This is across and between different systems in different parts of the digitally connected ship, between ships, with onshore assistance as well as between different onshore devices.

By providing information from various sources, opportunities for innovation by new and existing stakeholders are created as well as opportunities for third-party developers, who would offer innovative services and increased safety.

MODERN MARITIME

For centuries, perhaps millennia, it was the norm in shipping that data or intelligence was only shared based on self-interest. Now the sharing is the self-interest. A company can only do, or be, the best with the right mechanisms to share, disseminate and to improve.

Using data streams, rather than centralised databases, we can now allow sharing of information based on trust, value and respect among involved stakeholders. With trust and all parties working positively towards their goals, suddenly key issues such as safety, ecological sustainability and efficiencies can be improved faster, more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

We stand at a real turning point, a waypoint for the old ways and the news. The challenges are ensuring a genuinely holistic, perhaps even altruistic approach, one which ensures that data is integrated and shared amongst those who can organise, and manage activities, and those who can make the necessary changes to improve and develop.

That is what the next generation of ship owners with the current iterations of maritime informatics are doing, they are sharing and turning that freedom of information into real commercial success. Long may it continue.