Representatives of the global container supply chain discuss advancements and challenges at TOC Americas 2024

This year, the event suggests rethinking business models, with reconfiguration of trade routes and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Maxwell Rodrigues/Grupo Tribuna)

Representatives of the global container supply chain are discussing advancements and challenges at TOC Americas 2024, taking place until Thursday (3) in Panama City, Panama. This year, the event, held at the Panama Convention Center, proposes rethinking business models through trade route reconfiguration and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.

Topics such as business intelligence, digitalization, and sustainability are debated in various panels and lectures. Concurrently, the Tech TOC conference offers sessions focused on technology and an exhibition where participants can explore the latest innovations in the sector. Grupo Tribuna is represented at the event by port consultant Maxwell Rodrigues.

The regional director for South America at Portwise, Guilherme Soares de Sá Peixoto, stated that the event creates opportunities for exchange not only between companies from a technological perspective, but also to assess business opportunities.

Regarding one of the main themes of the meeting, the evolution of automation, Peixoto explained that its "development in Europe or Asia is different from the scenario we observe in the U.S." In the Americas, port workers have initiated a strike on the East and Gulf coasts, protesting against automation in the terminals (read more in the report below).

“The advancement has been implemented there for quite some time and is inevitable. Regardless of whether new jobs are created and we transform the skills of port professionals, the pursuit of optimization and performance improvement will continue; this is no longer a topic of discussion”, stated the Portwise executive.

Meanwhile, the deputy vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean at HPC Hamburg Port Consulting GmbH, Marcelo Garcia D’Antona, spoke about rethinking the business model. “What we heard here is how rapidly changes impact businesses. It is important for the port sector to create the necessary resilience to ensure that customers continue to have their needs met.”

For his part, Maxwell noted the absence of public authorities at TOC Americas and saw D’Antona agree with him.

“The clients using Brazil’s ports have global operations, and thus, port authorities should be here. Production, supply, and distribution chains begin in China and end in Brazil. Changes in China will certainly affect Brazil. TOC Americas is of extreme importance and deserves close attention from sector representatives.”

New system The commercial director of Certus Port Automation, Dave Walraven, stated that the company is developing a damage detection system for containers, capable of identifying imperfections from a database. “Based on examples, we train the model to achieve results. We develop systems alongside clients to enable them to share data with us.”

Walraven also commented that artificial intelligence has improved optical character recognition (OCR) technology, developed to recognize text within images, such as photos and scanned documents. “AI has made a significant change in system development. With it, the system's recognition is much faster.”

Finally, Walraven advised that companies looking to optimize their operations should hire firms with global experience. “It's not just about executing the project, developing hardware, software, and services together, but also providing maintenance and support for future upgrades and extensions."