The tanker is being refloated

Until now, the shipping industry has had a hard time with digitalization. But now both large shipowners and small start-ups have realized that something has to change. There are plenty of starting points.

At first glance, the world's major industrial ports are not far behind in terms of digitalization. Cranes, container ships and dock workers still operate on the surface just as they did ten, 20 or 30 years ago: A ship moves from A to B, containers are unloaded, reloaded, loaded.

But beneath the surface, things are happening. "The shipping industry has never been an early adopter, not even when it comes to digitalization," says expert Burkhard Sommer, "But that's how slowly everyone is getting started." Sommer is deputy head of the Maritime Competence Center at the auditing and consulting firm PwC Germany. There, he analyzes trends that influence the trade of goods on the high seas. For some years now, this has also included digitalisation. There, he observes one thing above all:

Both long-established companies and the major shipping companies and, above all, young start-ups want to make the old tanker shipping a little more agile.

Large shipping companies build their own solutions

In fact, digitalization in shipping means first and foremost: saying goodbye to paper. This is because a large part of the data exchange still takes place there, regardless of whether it concerns the cargo, accompanying documents or customs permits. The reason for this is the high degree of internationalization in the industry. If a ship brings containers from Hamburg to Rio de Janeiro and they then have to be trucked to Peru, a whole series of countries, authorities and companies are involved, which would theoretically have to agree on a data collection tool.

The only ones who have any leverage at all here, big enough to spur real change, are the major international shipping companies. "The top 10 liners are all in the process of setting up appropriate systems right now," Sommer explains. Take Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company. The Danes now have nearly a dozen digital solutions in place to make it easier for them and their customers to do business. The group's Logistics Hub, for example, makes it possible to track a ship's expected arrival time, compare transport costs and book free capacity on ships. Container booking, payment and tracking can now also be handled digitally by the Copenhagen-based company.

So if industry heavyweights like Maersk, with its 89,000 employees and nearly $40 billion in revenue, are taking digitization into their own hands: Does that leave any room at all for founders? Burkhard Sommer certainly sees opportunities for young entrepreneurs: "There is still a need for small, simple solutions to the specific problems of the industry. There are good business models for start-ups. With the increasing digitalization of the entire logistics industry, there will be more and more connecting points for such solutions there."

PwC expert Sommer accordingly believes that more founders will make inroads into the industry. "Eighty percent of the world's goods trade is done over water," he says. Merely the one big, disruptive solution will rather not exist. "The industry is too fragmented for that." But isn't one niche enough for a startup

The answer to this can be found - how could it be otherwise - in Hamburg. One of the company's founders is Otto Klemke. The computer scientist started NautilusLog in 2016 together with his acquaintance Sven Hamer and his father Ingo Klemke. He first came into contact with shipping through his brother. He was a ship surveyor, a kind of expert for shipping. "When we started, we first looked at what the industry wanted," he reports. One request that kept coming: a digital logbook.

In the logbook, all data concerning the ship is recorded: Engine condition, routes, cargo. NautilusLog wants to map all this with the help of an app. In the beginning, resistance had to be overcome: "At the beginning, the crews in particular thought that our tool would only mean more work for them. But they quickly realized that NautilusLog mainly relieves them of routine work.

"When they get off the ship, the report is already done".

Otto Klemke, NautilusLog

According to the company's own information, one field in which the Hamburg-based company's services are already being used a lot is environmental reports. When surveyors come onto the ships for this, they can use the app to record all the necessary data. "When they then get off the ship, our tool has already almost completed the report from the relevant data." The surveyor then just has to do the fine-tuning, he says. Last year, 1800 reports were created this way, Klemke says.

In the long term, Klemke expects the digital logbook to become standard. "Currently we are talking with the International Organization for Standardization about specifications that such digital logs must meet," he says. Once the standards are set and the International Maritime Organization adopts them, the digital logbook could become commonplace on all ships worldwide.