Brussels, 14 November 2019
On 14 November 2019, FEPORT attended CLECAT’s Freight Forwarders’ Forum. The event was opened with a keynote speech by Mr Sandro Santamato, Head of Unit D1 Maritime Transport & Logistics at the European Commission’s DG MOVE, who noted that it was essential to understand the benefit of sharing information with others in a trusted environment and introduced the legislative proposal on the Electronic Freight Transport Information Regulation (eFTI), as well as the work of the Digital Transport and Logistics Forum (DTLF) in that regard.
The first panel focused on harmonisation, standardisation and cooperation in IT, which are key to make digitalisation in logistics a success. Industry speakers, including Mr Thomas Bagge, Managing Director & CEO at the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), Mr Roderick de la Houssaye, CEO at Nedcargo, and Mr Matjaž Auflič, representative of EurTrade Net/TRINET Informatika, highlighted the importance of standardisation of data elements and interfaces for the efficient and successful digitalisation in transport and subsequently shared their user-perspective.
The public sector perspective was provided by Ms Maria Rautavirta, Director of the Data Business Unit at the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, and Ms Lia Potec, Policy Officer at the European Commission’s DG MOVE, who explained the legislative proposal on the eFTI Regulation and its state of play more in detail.
The second panel discussed how global, European, national or even local smart initiatives can support efficient and cleaner freight transport mobility, as well as how digitalisation can support emissions accounting to decarbonise freight and how the EU can guarantee workable legislation in road transport, whilst supporting increased efficiencies.
In his keynote introduction, Mr Edgar Uribe Casillas, the Global Head of Environment and Sustainability at Kuehne + Nagel, presented K+N’s commitment to achieve CO2 neutrality by 2030, according to which K+N is planning to be fully carbon neutral worldwide for all direct and indirect emissions in its own sphere of influence as of 2020.
Subsequently, Mr Erkki Valtonen, Managing Director Finland at Blue Water Shipping, provided an SME point of view, arguing that the best way to be sustainable for SMEs is to be as cost-efficient as possible.
Conveying the shippers’ perspective, Mr Sergio Barbarino, Research Fellow at Procter & Gamble, spoke about the role of innovation in ensuring sustainable logistics in the future. Mr Philippe Mangeard, President at TK'Blue Agency, argued that there were a lot of costs to be saved by reducing the sources of poor-quality transport and introduced his company’s work on creating support tools accessible for all freight forwarders.
Introducing the European Commission’s perspective, Mr Alexandre Paquot, Head of Unit for Road Transport at DG CLIMA, declared that transport was the only sector where emissions were on the rise. The way to address this challenge was through an integrated approach, which included provisions to decarbonise fuels and make all types of vehicles more fuel-efficient.
Source: CLECAT