CASA holds seminar on ‘Sustainability through Collaboration’ to mark Maritime Week

From left: Igor Savostianoff - MD/ CMA CGM Shared Centre, Capt. Peshala Medagama - General Manager/CINEC Maritime Campus, Dr. Dan Malika Gunasekera – Acting Chairman/ Executive Director Ceylon Shipping Corporation, Chathura Dissanayaka - Assistant Vice President Supply Chain/Nestle Lanka, Sudattha Silva - Superintendent/Sri Lanka Customs, Lalith Edirisinghe - Head-Department of Logistics and Transport/CINEC Maritime Campus, Jeyan Costa - Shipping Manager/ Nestle Lanka , Kingsley Abeywickrema- General Manager Commercial & Documentation/MSC Lanka Ltd. & ICS - Sri Lanka, Dhammika Walgampaya - Secretary General/CASA 

With the rapid evolution in megaship sizes, there is now a burning need for sustainability in the maritime industry which deserves attention. A chief component of this has to do with collaboration, not only between ports and shipping lines but with the entire logistics chain.

Ships, ports, terminals and containers are a key interface in the supply chain and the capacity and capability of these components cannot be varied in the short term - and significant enhancements take many years to put in place. With shipping being a derived demand of international trading, the carriers are challenged by the anti-resilient behaviour of their customers.  As a result, all the parameters in the container shipping industry can easily become bottlenecks. 

Therefore, it is vital that shipping lines work in collaboration with their stakeholders to make the best use of resources and facilities without adding more costs that will ultimately make the world a better place to live in.

There were three presentations by industry experts. ‘The Ships and Ports: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow’ by Kingsley Abeywickrama of MSC Lanka Ltd. and ICS - Sri Lanka. He explained the key considerations of collaboration between ports and ships. He also noted the importance of collaboration between universities and the shipping lines as research is highly important in sustainability. 

Sri Lanka Customs Superintendent Sudatta Silva spoke on ‘Eliminating the impediments in International shipping though collaboration: the Customs perspectives’, in which he elaborated how Compliance could be converted to Collaboration.  Both of these were focussing on the external collaboration. 

A researched-based, thought-provoking speech was delivered by Lalith Edirisinghe of the CINEC Maritime Campus on ‘Collaboration among carriers; the diachronic, synchronic views and the way forward’.  It was pointed out that shipping line could save a lot of money if they exchange containers between them. 

Roughly $ 100 million is spent on empty container repositioning in Sri Lanka and at least 16 % of this could be saved through collaboration. It was also revealed that 17 mega carriers already had provisions to exchange containers in their alliance agreements although they were not practiced. He also pointed out that the Container Exchange Model was first presented at the Global Port Research Alliance held in May 2015 in Hong Kong. 

The idea of Virtual Container Pool (VCP) will be presented at the Colombo International Maritime Conference on 26 September in Colombo. Container Inventory Management Matrix (6 ‘R’ Model) will be introduced at the 14th World Conference on Transport Research, which will be held in Shanghai in 2016. The 3F Model and Multidimensional Index for Container Inventory Management will be introduced in 2016. 

New and emerging infections keep coming back and the world needs a collective defence system, and that requires international cooperation and collaboration in the name of global solidarity.

These findings may be new dimensions that drive the future of the container shipping industry and CASA’s highly professional and competent members are committed to contributing their own expertise toward the common interests of the shipping industry.