With Great Britain being an island, ports are vital to our economy. They handle 95% of our imports and exports, and employ about 125,000 people. There are significant opportunities for innovation to deliver improvements and growth both in ports themselves and also for the country as a whole.
But the port sector operates on very low margins and doesn’t have many reserves to trial new ways of doing things. Support is needed to break down the barriers and risks to implementing new technology, to help the sector realise its full potential.
Ports are a hub for the movement of goods and people, interchanging them between sea and inland transportation. For goods, this involves a lot of machinery such as cranes and carriers to move and secure containers. The scale is epic with a single large container ship carrying over 200,000 tonnes of cargo in over 20,000 containers. These all have to be moved, processed and stored at facilities in the port.
The operation of ports involves many inter-related stakeholders, including vessel and inland transport operators moving the goods in and out of ports. In addition, there are overseeing authorities like His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs performing frontier controls. Furthermore, there are freight forwarders managing the movement of goods, including processes such as paying customs duties.