Over half of the EU’s import (by value) enters the continent via maritime routes. In recent years, these operations have encountered great challenges: pandemic disruptions, Red Sea attack and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The next obstacle: congestion.
The carriers in the maritime sector are now continuously evaluating their schedules, says Stefan Verberckmoes from Alphaliner at Intermodal Europe 2026 in Rotterdam. They operate in such a volatile environment, that there is no long-term predictability. “Biz as usual does not exist anymore”, the Alphaliner analyst says. Part of the challenge is congestion in ports.
To illustrate, 20% of the world’s fleet was waiting at anchorage to get into a port recently. This happened when typhoons struck China, but port infrastructure in general remains a bottleneck too. As a consequence, shipping lines are investing in terminals and some of them are becoming logistics groups. The recent acquisition of the Matrans in Rotterdam by Boluda Shipping in a case in point.
Verberckmoes remains pessimistic about Europe’s ability to deal with the port congestion challenges. “There is no way European ports will grow their capacity sufficiently”, he says. Excessive procedures and the slow pace of tackling problems are the culprit.
Data sharing across the supply chain
Earlier data sharing about container arrivals across the supply chain could streamline transshipment operations. This needs no infrastructure changes but could grow capacity and mitigate congestion. This thought was expressed by an audience attendee at the Intermodal Europe conference session, but an earlier conference revolved around the same idea.
Speaking on behalf of the Dutch shippers’ association evofenedex, Casper Roerade explains that the EU port system is indeed congestion, but hinterland networks too. He does not mention rail explicitly. Neither does any one of the speakers at the conference, but the thought still applies.
“We need to make the system more efficient: more with less”, says Roerade. “This is where data comes in.”
Carriers are late to share information about container destinations and pick up times with terminals, according to Roerade. These are roadblocks to efficiency. If shippers, carriers, terminals were more interconnected, then a lot more planning could be done in advance and terminal container stacking can be done more efficiently. Besides, shippers want to know when their containers are arriving at their destinations.
Data sharing could help streamline operations, that much is clear. Dennis Dortland, who represents the Dutch Port Community System Portbase, adds that the right infrastructure needs to be in place before that can happen. For example, he says, “we need to know the other stakeholders so we know who to share data with. In the security area, we should know who is going to pick up the load instead of using pin codes and reference numbers. We can do this with a digital identity for companies. That would be a big change.”
The data format matters
Still, the solution is not as simple as just sharing data. There are some caveats, explains Mariuxi Chavez from ORBCOMM. You can share location data, but that means little without the proper context, she says.”Different stakeholders are looking for different KPIs: for carriers its quick transport, for terminals its yard capacity. We need to cooperate across stakeholders to align their interpretation of the data.”
A degree of standardisation is also necessary to enable all stakeholders to use the data efficiently. “We need the institutions that are going to drive these standards”, adds Chavez. “Sharing raw data from our [ORBCOMM] device is not useful because it will contain data that others cannot interpret. We need to structure the data so that everyone is using the same type of information in order to avoid misunderstandings across parties.”
Data standardisation is a topic growing in importance in logistics. This is all the more true with the rise of AI. Fortunately, industry-wide standards are in development.