Execution speed to fix vessels will become 10 times faster in the years to come, Signal Group chief executive Ioannis Martinos projected as part of a celebration of digital technology in shipping.
And the expectation extends to other areas of shipping as well, including how long it takes to order provisions or bunkers for vessels.
“All the things that take a lot of time now, at least half of them are going to become 10 times faster over the next 30 years in my opinion,” Martinos said.
Greece’s Signal Group is the parent of ship manager Signal Maritime but also the software as a service firm Signal Ocean. Also in the group is Signal Ventures, an investor in the technology space.
Martinos’ comments came as part of a company event during Posidonia 2022 that also included a presentation by Constantinos Daskalakis, a Greek computer scientist at Massachusets Institute of Technology who is an advisor to Signal.
Among other changes that the executive said he expects is continued pressure facing shipping companies on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors.
“There is more scrutiny and more expectations from us as an industry,” he said. “We only make 3% of global CO2, but that doesn’t mean that we do not have to do our part.”
Martinos also said he expects increasing outsourcing of commercial and technical management.
“And this will also lead to some commercial consolidation,” he said.
Martinos said that as the company geared up for the presentation on what changes are ahead for shipping because of advances in technology, it was hard to make predictions because of the plethora of examples of failed predictions in the past.
“Growing up in the 80s, you would hear that by the year 2000 we would have flying cars,” he said. “Instead of flying cars, we now have Teslas.”
So he first focused on what will not change in shipping.
At the top of the list is that success in business will still depend on personal relationships, the Greek executive said.
He also said keeping commercial information private and confidential will remain an important aspect of the industry.
“There are people, especially in the technology world, that are democratising some of the information, but I don’t think that is a trend that can actually come to full completion because many of the commodity traders would rather keep the price at which they are selling commodities, and the destination where the commodities are going, secret,” Martinos said.
