Purpose: Severe disruptions to maritime supply chains, including port closures, congestion and shortages in shipping capacity, have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper’s purpose is to explore flexibility-based countermeasures that enable actors in maritime supply chains to mitigate the effects of disruptions with different characteristics. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with shipping lines, shippers, forwarders and ports. Data on the COVID-19 pandemic's effects and countermeasures were collected and compared with data regarding the 2016–2017 Gothenburg port conflict. Findings: Spatial, capacity, service and temporal flexibility emerged as the primary countermeasures, whilst important characteristics of disruptions were geographical spread, duration, uncertainty, criticality, the element of surprise and intensity. Spatial flexibility was exercised in both disruptions by switching to alternative ports. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring capacity flexibility included first removing and then adding vessels. Shipping lines exercising service flexibility prioritised certain cargo, which made the spot market uncertain and reduced flexibility for forwarders, importers and exporters that changed carriers or traffic modes. Experience with disruptions meant less surprise and better preparation for spatial flexibility. Practical implications: Understanding how actors in maritime supply chains exercise flexibility-based countermeasures amid disruptions with different characteristics can support preparedness for coming disruptions. Originality/value: Comparing flexibility-based measures in a pandemic versus port conflict provides insights into the important characteristics of disruptions and the relevance of mitigation strategies. The resilience of maritime supply chains, although underexamined compared with manufacturing supply chains, is essential for maintaining global supply chain flows.

At the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020, the Swedish shipping sector was first affected by border closures preventing passengers to use RoPax shipping and cruise ferries. There were some blank sailings but in general they kept operating to foster intra-European trade by trucks despite the missing revenues from passengers. Shipping in general was affected by port disrup-tions and complicated crew changes. Eventually, however, it was clear that the most dramatic disruptions on a global scale where experienced in the container segment. General media reported on delayed goods, high freight rates and, however not related to the pandemic, the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal for a week in March 2021. Currently, there are few reports of supply chains and shipping suffering from disruptions and capacity constraints related to the pandemic. The peak in freight rates was rather replaced by depressed rates and there is a certain risk that some logisticians and supply chain managers regard the pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime event and just want to get back to a previous be-haviour seeing container shipping as a commodity with indefinite capacity at a reasonable price. Nevertheless, the war in Ukraine, the drought in the Panama Canal and the attacks by the Houthi rebels in the Red Sea create other problems for container shipping. Freight rates increase significantly, but from very low levels. The purpose of the report is to describe and analyse how international container shipping was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and other disruptions. The analysis takes a Swedish perspective on disruptions and tries to go beyond the anecdotal reporting and capture what happened and why. Container shipping is put into a context of economy, consumption, world trade, supply chains and logistics. The pandemic and more current events affecting container shipping market are described together with how shipping lines responded. A series of interviews with Swedish actors revealed how they perceived the disruptions and what countermeasures the actors have applied to mitigate the effects, their organisational learning and how they prepare for future disruptions

Trade imbalances and global disturbances generate mismatches in the supply and demand of empty containers (ECs) that elevate the need for empty container repositioning (ECR). This research investigated dry ports as a potential means to minimize EC movements, and thus reduce costs and emissions. We assessed the environmental and economic effects of two ECR strategies via dry ports—street turns and extended free temporary storage—considering different scenarios of collaboration between shipping lines with different levels of container substitution. A multi-paradigm simulation combined agent-based and discrete-event modelling to represent flows and estimate kilometers travelled, CO2 emissions, and costs resulting from combinations of ECR strategies and scenarios. Full ownership container substitution combined with extended free temporary storage at the dry port (FTDP) most improved ECR metrics, despite implementation challenges. Our results may be instrumental in increasing shipping lines’ collaboration while reducing environmental impacts in up to 32 % of the inland ECR emissions. © 2023 The Author(s)

Rapidly evolving needs of shippers, rising competition, advancement in digital technologies and a quest to increase cost and operational efficiencies are all driving the digital transformation of maritime logistics. However, in contrast to other industries such as media, telecom, banking, retail and even other traffic modes, the often family-controlled and network-centric liner shipping industry has historically been conservative in adopting innovations; hence, it is still far behind in embracing digitalization. Based on semi-structured interviews with senior executives of liner shipping companies, this study explores the current digital maturity levels, the opportunities provided by digitalization and the underlying challenges that hinder its implementation in the liner shipping segment within the larger maritime logistics industry and identifies the essential leading strategies of digitalization in this segment. The digital maturity categories applied to liner shipping provide an opportunity for practitioners in this industry to evaluate their business functions’ digital maturity levels. Furthermore, based on interview data, digital transformation for the maritime logistics industry is defined, as well as 9 major barriers and 19 different pathways to digital transformation are identified. Understanding the key challenges and success factors in the industry is a key to approaching digitalization problems and developing a healthy digital transformation process. © 2022 The Authors

Although some movements of empty containers are needed due to imbalances between inbound and outbound goods flows in specific geographical areas, the transport of empty containers could be performed more efficiently. This report outlines results from the project “Increasing transport efficiency through reducing positioning of empty containers” performed during 2020-2023 by RISE and Chalmers, and financed by the Swedish Energy Agency. The purpose of the project was to contribute to increasing transport efficiency by understanding how empty container repositioning can be reduced and made more efficient in the Swedish transport system. To provide increased understanding regarding current practices and possible improvement areas, the report describes empty repositioning of containers in the inland container transport, and highlights drivers and barriers to minimize and make empty repositioning more efficient. Data on empty container movements in ports and by truck provide increased understanding of the current state. However, available data only offer partial views of empty container movements. Therefore, an empty trip model was constructed to help understand the proportion of containers that are transported empty between various origin-destination pairs, drawing on the Swedish road goods transport data from Trafikanalys. Several recommendations are made for how to improve data on empty container movements, for example differentiating between 20 and 40 feet containers. Also, this report details strategies for either reducing the empty container repositioning or making it more efficient within the national transport system, with a focus on: a) increased reutilization of containers and b) an increased share of rail compared to truck transport. Reutilization involves matching import and export containers to a larger degree, for example facilitated by extended storage of containers, and also how demands in various regions can be matched more efficiently, where some geographical areas are import dominated and others export dominated. The improvement potential in terms of cost and emissions have been calculated, simulating transport data in specific case studies. One simulation concerned reducing empty container repositioning locally, comparing the current situation with improvements in terms of street turns and extended storage given different collaboration levels. The extended storage scenario delivered the best results, as it significantly increased the likelihood of finding export cargo for an emptied import container. Another simulation considered empty container movements between Swedish inland terminals, identifying a large potential for both reutilization locally and triangulation between terminals compared to the current situation. The report further outlines the outcome of a Multi-Actor-Multi-Criteria-Analysis, where opportunities to reduce empty container repositioning in the hinterland of a port were considered from several stakeholders’ perspectives: shipping lines, transport operators, inland terminals, forwarders, ports and cargo owners. The scenarios evaluated were a) Time Flexibility, where additional days were allowed to find matching export cargo for an emptied import container, b) Container Sharing, where implications of allowing matching of containers of shipping lines in the same alliance were explored, and c) Data Sharing, where increased transparency regarding containers available for export in the inland was explored. The stakeholders preferred different scenarios, and details explaining their reasoning is provided. Drawing on the insights regarding current practices and possible improvement areas, recommendations to industry and authorities are provided. Widespread collaboration between stakeholders is needed, even so, all stakeholders can take action to create better conditions for empty container repositioning. Smarter tools for planning is one example.

Inland waterway transportation (IWT) in Sweden could be a substitute for road transports with the prospects of improving the environmental performance. Sweden currently has no systematic strategies or policies for transports on inland waterways (IWW), and despite available capacity the waterways are barely utilized. In the Netherlands, for example, the IWW capacity is embedded in the transport system and utilized to a large extent. For a successful modal shift it is important to understand the drivers and barriers for the shift and develop strategies to leverage the drivers and mitigate the barriers. This study aims to identify drivers and barriers for IWT based on successful benchmark cases in the Netherlands. Furthermore, based on the learning from these benchmarks the study aims to point out strategic actions for Sweden regarding IWT. The data for this study was collected from IWT organizations, shippers and local administrations in the Netherlands. The results showed that main drivers for IWT are congestion relief, cost reduction and lower environmental impact. On the other hand, main barriers are slow pace of development, high investment costs and poor hinterland connectivity. For a successful modal shift in Sweden, it is crucial to prepare governmental support, a change in stakeholders' mindset, decisive attitude to modal shift process and a strong long-term perspective.