In particular CO2 taxes pose a major uncertainty factor for shipping and may in the long run cause major changes in world consumption of energy:
・transfer from oil and coal to gas and other fuels (fuel cells in cars)
・the steel industry changes to become more scrap based, and
・technological changes in terms of better energy efficiency
ICT - Challenges & Opportunities
ICT is about to become an extremely important driving force behind structural changes in the shipping industry.
All the changes that ICT will impose on the shipping industry can hardly be foreseen today. ICT is first and foremost a "facilitator" and a challenge more than a "revolution". It represents an important opportunity for added value to conventional shipping through logistic/information management.
As far as I can see, many shipping companies must either adapt to ICT or be left behind in the market development.
Business to business relations (B2B) represents one of the greatest unused potentials of ICT for shipping companies. Firms integrate their value chains in order to improve cost efficiency and market position. Transport service providers, that have access to the information network of a particular B2B, can make use of this information to offer optimal and total transport services. This may eliminate current intermediares, like brokers and agents.
The crucial question for the shipping industry is who's to capture this new role of handling and processing the information of the B2B network, making it applicable to shipping companies providing optimal physical transport services. Will we see shipping companies filling this function, or will new players (third party logistic providers) with roots in ICT find ways of capitalising on their knowledge of logistic/information management?
As far as I can see, this is one of the major challenges facing the shipping industry today.
Business to consumer relations (B2C): E-commerce is about to change the very nature of trade. It is hard to see the full scope of these changes, but using the term "change of paradigm" is probably not an exaggeration.
E-commerce will certainly cause the elimination of intermediaries, and great demands will be put on new, efficient and global distribution systems. This may cause a fragmentation of established trade currents, and new high frequent short sea shipping markets are likely to emerge.
Short sea shipping and ship operation
It should be an overall goal for all involved in transport, to reduce the environmental impact from transport. We believe an effective way to achieve this is to transfer transport from road to sea, inland waterways and Short Sea Shipping.
As mentioned earlier, when companies merges, they seem to concentrate more of their attention on their core business, and outscource other activities, for instance logistic services. And the merged company often become very demanding customers. If a shipping company wants to satisfy these customers' requirements they need to be able to offer a global service product - or total logistic services. Information handling in the logistics chain will be crucial.
Therefore we will see shipping companies that traditionally was experts in seatransport, now develop their services further, being providers of multimodal or logistics services.
This requires an efficient flow of information through the chain, from the manufacturer to the final delivery, covering truck-company, inventory, harbour terminal etc. Basic information plotted in by the manufacturer should flow through the chain saving the other actors in the chain from plotting in the same information. This will save time and reduce chances for errors.
We believe that the winner will be the one offering to the customer knowledgebased innovative logistics services including information handling in the door to door service.
