Shipping | Collaborate to face the waves

The pandemic, shortages and war in Ukraine have changed the shipping landscape. In Quebec, adapting to change translates into stronger collaboration between the various players in the industry, both from the point of view of technological innovation and the workforce.

Crises follow one another for the world economy and, by extension, for maritime transport. After COVID-19, shortages of all kinds ended up changing the game: disruptions became the norm.

In the industrial sector, the “just in time” policy has been transformed into just in case”, illustrates Mathieu Saint-Pierre, president of the Société de développement économique du Saint-Laurent (SODES).

Maritime transport has had to adapt and still has to find solutions to show more flexibility, in order to be ready for the next crises. “When a ship arrives in a port, it transports the equivalent of a thousand trucks or 300 wagons, which must enter and leave the port”, affirms the president of SODES, who pleads for an improvement in relations between the Seaway, road and railway.

At the beginning of the summer, the ports of Montreal, Quebec and Trois-Rivières expressed their desire to increase their collaboration to streamline their operations, but also to better sell the image of Quebec ports abroad. These three major players say they are ready to pool their data to develop decision support tools and to facilitate interconnection with other transport networks.

For its part, the Association of Maritime Employers (AEM) is not to be outdone. From 1^er January 2023, the employer of the 1,700 longshoremen and checkers at the ports of Montreal, Contrecœur, Trois-Rivières and Bécancour will deploy its Galileo artificial intelligence system, which will improve port workforce planning . With this tool, designed by the firm Airudi and the Scale AI cluster, maritime employers will be able to know — and even adjust — the exact arrival time of boats up to 21 days in advance.

Today, the real visibility of employers varies from half a day to 24 hours at most. In fact, 60% of ships do not arrive at the time initially planned.

However, the Port of Montreal is “the only port in North America where we have a unionized workforce with a collective agreement,” points out Robert Roy, president of the MEA. It is essential for maritime employers to bring in their employees when the ship can be unloaded, preferably in the morning, when the afternoon hours are paid 50% more, and the night hours are paid the double. “We will be able to bring the ships to a window where we can work at a lower cost,” underlines Mr. Roy. By the end of 2023, Galileo should be integrated into the Port of Montreal’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, said Mr. Roy, welcoming this contribution to better management of logistics flows.

The human shock of war

At Fednav, the war in Ukraine was a shock. Canada’s largest international bulk shipping company is directly affected by the military conflict. It has 200 Ukrainian sailors among all of its 1500 sailors in the world. Some were in Ukraine when the war broke out in February, and they were drafted into the Ukrainian army, said Martin Krafft, vice president in charge of fleet management at Fednav. Others have gone to their country to get involved.

Those who remained on the ships struggled to communicate with their families in Ukraine. Fednav provided them with an unlimited internet connection, as during the pandemic, when its sailors could not go ashore. The Ukrainian sailors who remained on board continue to work with other sailors, including several of Russian nationality, with all the potential for tension one can imagine. “We have deployed a hotline so that sailors can speak with psychologists and obtain support for themselves and their families,” explains Martin Krafft.