Olympic Shipping and Management chief executive George Karageorgiou believes digitalisation in Greek shipping will diminish the importance of seafarers on board vessels.
But they need to be trained to adapt to work in a data-driven world.
Speaking to TradeWinds on the sidelines of Capital Link’s Maritime Leaders Summit in Athens, Karageorgiou said that as long as the fleet runs on internal combustion engines, shipowners will never do away with seafarers.
“We need to train our existing people in order to read the new information,” he said.
Karageorgiou said that as shipowners increasingly adopt digital technology on board vessels, it will put more importance on decisions informed by data, rather than on intuition and “naftosyni”, a Greek term for seamanship.
“With the new technologies, the importance of seafarers will decrease. He will not become obsolete,” Karageorgiou told the packed Capital Link conference room.
“For Greeks, it will probably diminish the competitive advantage that we were enjoying by employing Greek seafarers first on the ships and then in the offices ashore.”
For Greek shipping, that represents a cultural shift.
Karageorgiou, whose company is owned by Greece’s Onassis family, said the country’s shipping industry has traditionally relied on its people.
“People were the most important aspect of its success,” he said.
Panel moderator John Kokarakis, a Piraeus-based technology and business development director at classification society Burea Veritas, said he is that the shift away from reliance on seafarers on board ships and toward data-driven decisions is a good idea.
“A lot of problems are solved in a much easier way with artificial intelligence”, he told TradeWinds.
But he agreed that the digital change requires training for seafarers.
“Seafarers are going to have different competencies,” he said.
Karageorgiou said that all shipowners will benefit from adopting digital technology, but how much it helps will depend. For companies with a good ship management team, performance improvement might be in the single digits.
“If you have bad people managing your vessels, then digitalisation will help you a lot,” he said.
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