The mergence of the Meridian Port Services (MPS) Terminal 3 mid-last year has been a major turning point in the transitioning of Tema Port as a major port on the African corridor. Some of the major changes that has occurred is the emergence of new technologies at the port such as online appointment systems, RFID, facial recognition and other biometric features that was not available at the old port controlled by Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA). Port truckers are major players that have to interact with these new technologies to be enable them move containers and goods from the port to their various destinations. In this paper we seek to understand the relationship between a trucker’s level of human capital and ease of use of new technologies and how this translates into overall port efficiency at operational level.

Shipping alliance in container shipping has become more dominant and vigorous, with increasing volume and frequency of slot exchange on vessels along the call ports in all trades. Currently ship liners often share the same customers and compete the unused spaces on the vessels. They are facing more dynamic customer projection with sudden cargo overbook and shortfall. Well vessel slot planning, including slot exchange among alliance partners, for higher revenue and vessel utilisation are more critical. The level of non-cooperation in slot exchange for multiple liners in a vessel under an alliance is subject to basic slot entitlement, customer base overlapping, projection accuracy of loading regions, and subsequent ports cargo loading uncertainty. This paper aims investigate the effects of non-cooperative slot exchange behaviours on revenue and vessel utilisation at both alliance and individual liner’s levels, and the feasibility of more effective and efficient slot allocation of a liner under the influence of competition.

Collaboration in freight and mobility has been successfully implemented in the transportation industry and it has generated considerable research interest recently, in the light of rising platform-based companies. In the maritime sector, early forms of collaboration such as shipping pools and shipping alliances have proved their potential to attain additional profitability and efficiency. Nowadays, new opportunities for collaborative maritime transportation, supported by the advance of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) with cyber-physical systems and digital technology, should be further highlighted. Besides, the higher requirements for resilience and decarbonization in maritime transportation also requires novel concepts of collaboration and their adaption in practice. Although collaborative freight has been suggested for decades, the contribution to collaborative maritime transportation is scattered and fragmented. In this study, we provide a comprehensive survey of existing dimensions of collaboration in the maritime branch of transportation and take a critical look at the challenges these approaches are facing as well as distinguishing similarities and specialties compared to other domains of transportation. The survey looks into the evolution of maritime collaboration from traditional operations to digital data sharing and autonomous synchronization. Based on the investigation, a framework of platform-based maritime transportation, considering consolidation of stakeholders and infrastructure as well as the associated logistics process and information flows, is designed to bring the fragmented problems together and thus provides systematical visions for researchers and practitioners to further facilitate collaboration in maritime transportation. Moreover, we analyze the up-to-date application of collaborative platforms in the real world and discuss the research gaps and a research agenda from an operations research perspective to provide support for future collaborative maritime transportation systems.

Recent development shows that increasing number of measurement and automation equipment has been placed on board to replace the personal skill and decision-making. Further, it is intended to control ships from the shore office to eliminate much of the tasks of seafarers. This paper presents opportunities to argue on the hypothesis that the limitations of technological development, difficulty to spread the new technology to every corner of shipping and the financial burden for the vast investment will decrease the probability of seamanship elimination from ship operation. We predict that laws and technology will not alone promote quality shipping. Our research focuses on the method of assuring the high quality of work that has been practiced on-board and ashore. It is hypothesised that we should reappraise the effectiveness of 'seamanship', which used to be in the centre of paragon in ship operation of maritime transport and nurtured as tacit knowledge and shared among competent ship officers and crew.

The paper investigates main corporate crises occurred in the shipping industry by adopting a marketing-based brand management perspective in order to propose a conceptual framework for disentangling corporate and brand crisis typologies, causes, implications and viable marketing communication strategies for supporting shipping managers in overtaking the dramatic crisis momentum. It aims to fix the literature gap on the analysis of communication strategies, media, content and styles available to marketing manager involved in shipping companies’ crisis events.