Digitalisation is opening up new opportunities for shipping supply chains

FROM the food on your table to your household products and the smartphone in your hand, most goods and materials enter the shipping supply chain at some (or several) points prior to their manufacture or sale.

Thanks to innovations in container shipping, the world’s trade is transported efficiently and seamlessly by one of the world’s oldest professions. So seamlessly, in fact, that you may only have become aware of the fragility of this carefully choreographed industry when the pandemic struck, causing congestion and disruptions to the just-in-time supply chain on which we all rely.

Of course, the pandemic opened our eyes within the industry, too. In particular, it highlighted that we could do more to make shipping and the supply chain more transparent, efficient, secure and sustainable. As an industry, we have already begun to explore and embrace greater automation and digitalisation. However, we still rely on many manual and paper-based processes and practices, some of which can be traced back centuries to the very origins of shipping.