The State of Digitalisation in Maritime Logistics

Maritime logistics is routinely described as slow to digitalise, and the explanation usually offered is that the technology is not yet mature, yet the evidence points to a different conclusion, because most of the relevant technology has been available for years and the binding constraint lies instead in how the industry is organised. Shipping is composed of firms that compete intensely and have long been reluctant to place their data on systems they do not control, so that in the absence of a trusted shared platform and a clear legal foundation even capable technology has struggled to spread. The same pattern is visible across the large shared platforms, the documentation at the centre of trade, and the ports, and it sets up a paradox worth confronting at the end, namely that an industry this dependent on paper is also remarkably difficult to disrupt.

The platforms: capable technology, insufficient cooperation

TradeLens, the platform that Maersk and IBM launched in 2018 and built on blockchain to digitalise global trade, illustrates the problem precisely, because it performed well in trials, reportedly cutting documentation costs by 70 to 90 percent and shortening some United States transit times by around 40 percent (Merehead, 2026), and at its height connected more than 175 organisations and over 600 ports and terminals (Computerworld, 2022), yet Maersk and IBM discontinued it in late 2022 and closed it the following year (Maersk, 2022). The reason was not technical but commercial and institutional, since competing carriers were unwilling to entrust sensitive data to a platform jointly owned by their largest rival and the governance model never dispelled that mistrust (iStart, 2022; Supply Chain Dive, 2022), which accords with the analyst view that platforms of this kind succeed only where every participant gains a clear and comparable benefit, a threshold TradeLens never reached (Computerworld, 2022). That much of the industry was still exchanging data as email attachments at the time only underscores how modest the starting point remained (The Maritime Executive, 2022).

The documentation: a record still tied to paper

The bill of lading, which serves at once as a receipt for the cargo, as evidence of the contract of carriage and as proof of ownership, offers the most precise measure of how slow progress has been, given that carriers issue roughly 45 million of them each year and only about 1.2 percent were electronic in 2021, despite electronic versions having existed for some two decades (Digital Container Shipping Association [DCSA], n.d.-a, n.d.-b). Adoption of carrier issued electronic originals had reached only about 5.7 percent by January 2025, with broader estimates approaching 11 percent by the middle of that year (DCSA, n.d.-b; Lester Aldridge, 2026), even though industry modelling values full adoption at around 18 billion United States dollars in efficiency gains together with a further 30 to 40 billion dollars in trade growth, and the nine leading carriers have committed to operating entirely electronically by 2030 (DCSA, n.d.-a, 2023). The reasons for the delay are once again organisational rather than technical, residing partly in legal recognition that arrived only recently, with the United Kingdom legislating in 2023 and the Netherlands in 2025, but above all in the long inability of rival electronic platforms to exchange documents, which forced banks and shippers to integrate each system separately and thereby discouraged adoption (Lester Aldridge, 2026). That barrier has now fallen, as the first transfer between two platforms under shared standards took place in May 2025 and a complete live transaction followed in January 2026 (DCSA, 2025; Cleareye.ai, 2026), which shifts the remaining obstacle from capability to willingness.

The ports: where it is already working

The contrast with the ports is instructive, because where the problem is narrower and the participants share a common interest, digital tools have already delivered measurable results, and the Port of Rotterdam is the clearest case, its port call system, first Pronto and now PortXchange, having reduced average vessel waiting time by around 20 percent through the shared exchange of planned, expected and actual timings so that ships arrive when a berth is ready rather than idling at anchor, an approach since extended to ports including Felixstowe, Algeciras and Houston (Seatrade Maritime News, 2024; Port of Rotterdam, n.d.-a). Rotterdam now handles roughly 80 percent of its 230,000 annual seagoing port calls automatically, with staff intervening only on exceptions, and in 2026 it went further by developing a full digital twin of the port to model vessel movements and emissions (Port of Rotterdam, n.d.-b; Marine Link, 2026), although these leading ports remain exceptions rather than the norm, since much of the industry still operates through manual processes and spreadsheets (Ship Technology, 2022).

The paradox: behind on paperwork, yet hard to disrupt

A complete assessment must reconcile all of this with an apparent contradiction, which is that the same industry that is slow with its documentation is also exceptionally resilient, a theme raised directly at the Smart Maritime Network conference in Rotterdam (Smart Maritime Network, 2026). The 2026 Iran war, which began on 28 February 2026, and the Strait of Hormuz crisis that followed tested the system close to its limits by disrupting both of the region's principal shipping routes at once, with commercial traffic through the strait, which carries roughly 20 percent of the world's oil and a comparable share of its liquefied natural gas, falling to about 5 percent of its normal level as the major carriers, among them Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, suspended transits and renewed attacks on Red Sea shipping forced vessels around the Cape of Good Hope at considerable cost in time and money (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2026; Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2026; CNN, 2026). Trade nonetheless continued by changing route rather than halting, moving more oil through pipelines that bypass the strait and relying on air freight bridges, ship to ship transfers and smaller vessel channels until a memorandum between the United States and Iran in mid June 2026 set out terms to reopen the waterway, with a return to normal expected to take months (CRS, 2026; CNBC, 2026). The lesson is direct, in that maritime trade reroutes readily but rarely stops, and although the deeper question of why, whether through redundancy, flexible routing, dispersed decision making or the very looseness of its digital coupling, is a substantial one best reserved for separate treatment, the fact that limited digital maturity has not rendered the industry fragile is itself a caution against treating the speed of digitalisation as the only consideration that matters.

What it adds up to

The pattern that runs through all three areas is therefore consistent, since progress arrives when the problem is well defined, when the shared system is controlled by no single company, and when law and common standards follow through, conditions that TradeLens failed to meet and that the interoperability breakthrough and Rotterdam's gains satisfied. For carriers, port authorities, freight forwarders and warehouse operators alike, the practical implication is that investment in proprietary technology yields little in isolation unless it is paired with shared standards and their genuine use in daily operations, and with those standards now proven and the ports demonstrating real returns, the industry stands close to a turning point that turns on a single question, which is whether it will adopt these tools as the default way of working or spend another decade discussing them.

References

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