Learn to live with lower container growth, says PSA

Speaking at Sea Asia taking place in Singapore this week, the PSA chief executive said that those still expecting 10% growth would be “sorry”.

Mr Tan also warned that while the shipping industry has taken just a short time to embrace mega ships, it will take the port system “rather longer” to adjust to the arrival of larger ships. “There needs to be quite a bit of catch up before ports can raise themselves up to effectively meet these changes,” he said.

And while ports might be ready in three, five or perhaps up to 10 years from now, port systems could take 10-15 years to get there.

“Upsizing is necessary and sometimes is required, but the challenge is that the whole system is not being upsized in tandem or in harmony. Things don’t happen so systematically in the ports sector, so issues come to roost with shipping terminals.”

Mr Tan pinpointed a better use of software to tackle the complex issues related to mega ships: “The existing systems are not intertwined; as call sizes and complexity have got bigger, our ‘brain size’ has not got bigger. We need to harness the IT revolution to improve this as we are all in it together: improving the efficiency of the whole process will be win-win.

“Things like GrabTaxi (a taxi booking app) show how dramtically things can change. Our collective task is how to change our composite efficiency.”

To that end, Mr Tan made a call to arms for good people, not necessarily from our industry, to find sustainable solutions for the future.