Nobody has said that change is easy. It takes identification of an issue, research into how best to address the issue, and a decision to accept the risk to move forward. For the shipping industry, we are surrounded by a need to change not just on one front—but multiple fronts. This requires leadership and a commitment to change not for change’s sake, but for improvement and efficiency. One such leader is Cargill who released its first Corporate Responsibility Report outlining not just their performance on different measures, but identifying the steps it intends to take to improve its performance on these measures. It offers a transparency that is unusual to shipping, but is a direction we must take in order to accelerate our industry’s evolution into a more efficient, modern and environmentally benign transportation provider. The public today has a love/hate relationship with shipping. While they love purchasing their goods and energy at a low price point, they expect us to operate with no adverse impact on the environment and risk-free in terms of safety and security. With a tsunami of regulations facing us, along with the push for digitalization to promote efficiency, the industry is seeking guidance on all fronts. We need more leaders like Cargill and Maersk who are stating their position on what industry needs to do to remain competitive. We need more innovators and investors, more decision makers and risk takers, more visionaries who see a global fleet that is operating in a manner that brooks no criticism of its practices and easily asserts its value. These are just some of the conversations that will be happening at SHIPPINGInsight in October. I hope you will join us as we enter the “Fourth Revolution”. Keep optimizing, Carleen |