Why the retrofitting case is growing for port automation

Drewry Webinar — Ports and Terminals market

Rising labour costs, the drive for Net Zero and the ability to make incremental changes through retrofitting are all spurring interest in port and terminal automation, according to maritime research and consulting services company Drewry.

During a recent webinar Webinar — Ports and Terminals market — December 2022 on Vimeo held to discuss Drewry’s quarterly insight report, Eleanor Hadland, senior analyst for ports and terminals, noted that Net Zero is challenging but also presents plenty of opportunities.

“Quite often at terminal level, we start the conversation about electrification, and about that going hand in hand with digitalisation, automation and efficiency,” she said.

Referring to recent labour disputes in Europe and the United States, she said shippers’ planning is now based on a disrupted supply chain being part of the reality of doing business. “Dock strikes are just another factor to consider,” she said, alongside port congestion, Covid-19 lockdowns, labour shortages in inland transport and elsewhere, and the impact of climate change.

There is a heightened risk of further industrial action, and the increasing price of labour would have much more material impact on operators’ margins than the price of oil or electricity, said Hadland.

In many cases, employers had reached a settlement with port workers where the alternative might have been losing cargo to rival ports.

Hadland said she expected the big rise in labour costs would spur more interest in the potential of automation, but the business case was also there even with lower labour costs. This would include retrofitting traditional port operations, not just ‘new, shiny greenfield fully automated terminals’.

“More recently we have seen the automation business case shift to relatively lower labour cost environments because of a number of factors — in particular, electrification, automation, digitalisation going hand in hand, and it’s all part of the Net Zero strategy,” she said.

When automation was all about greenfield developments, the challenges of retrofitting for automation were seen as really high, said Hadland. However, this had changed with the adoption of more automated processes within manual operations in existing terminals, with small parts being automated without having to change everything at once.

Dr Rafiq Swash, founder and CEO of Aidrivers, said: “AI- enabled automation and autonomous technologies offer extraordinary opportunities to meet port industry needs for net zero — saving costs, reducing waste and delivering efficiency and sustainability. But why not ‘try before you buy’? Our AI-enabled automation and autonomous mobility solutions allow port and terminal operators a scalable and cost-effective approach by starting with a single unit of terminal tractor or quay crane at a time, for testing and tweaking, and then scaling it to the fleet, with no need for disruption to overall operations.