Cargo is King and sets the agenda

In fragmented businesses full of individual silos that have done just fine for many years (until the current stresses exposed all the fault lines), there is much talk, lots of blame shifting and an absence of real “solutions” to the problem at hand. There are some analogies here with another big, urgent and seemingly intractable topic in the world of shipping – decarbonisation and alternative fuels. A trend finding roots is the drive by cargo interests to influence the behaviour of carriers.
There have even been early efforts by NGOs to “call out” big cargo importers who have contributed the most to emissions- with links back to which carriers are moving their containers. OK, the data is imperfect and prone to ‘useful interpretation’ by those seeking to draw their conclusions. But, nevertheless many commentators and analysts agree that going forward the cargo side will have increasing influence on carriers.
Efforts to unify and harmonise data, a seeming impossibility (think of all those abbreviations like EEXI and CII, to name a few), are beginning to take shape. I will go out on a limb here (maybe not such a flimsy limb, by the way) and suggest that the port business will be on the receiving end of similar efforts from the cargo side- frustrated with all the aforementioned problems, and tired of listening to the 2022 prognosticators without any action plans to relieve the situation.
I have seen early efforts to begin to unify and harmonise data from ports, which have been good with internal KPIs and the like, but with outward facing data flows, not so much. As we say, “cargo is king”, “cargo pays the freight”, among other clichés; my expectation therefore is that the cargo side will drive such efforts. Indeed, the reports of big box stores or large retailers actually chartering vessels, however vague (I have not seen names of vessels reported) are sparks evidencing the potential fire underneath.
It is important that ports take efforts to develop common frameworks seriously. Data-savvy readers at the ports might point to the nascent efforts underway in this area; I would applaud these steps but would pull out another aphorism complementing the others mentioned above- “cargo flows should define the data architecture.” Not very catchy, but readers should get the point.