Remarks by Senior Minister of State for Transport, Mr Chee Hong Tat at the Maritime Singapore Connect (MSC) Maritime Case Summit 2022

Ladies and Gentlemen,

1.     Thank you for inviting me to speak at this event. I am delighted to have the opportunity to address our industry leaders and our students, and to share with all of you some of the opportunities and challenges that we face in the maritime sector. This year’s Maritime Case Summit brought together more than 170 students from our universities and polytechnics, to tackle practical challenges set by maritime companies.

2.     I am heartened to know that among our students here tonight, some of you are taking maritime-related courses and many more are from non-maritime backgrounds. About 70% of our participants are studying business, logistics, engineering and computing. This reflects the diverse and inclusive nature of the maritime industry, as it provides a wide range of interesting jobs for different groups of workers. This also includes jobs that are both seafaring and shore-based.

3.     This diversity of skills and experiences will be crucial for Maritime Singapore to transform and thrive in the years ahead. Many of the challenges that we face may originate from the maritime sector, but the solutions will often come from beyond the sector. That is why we are happy that many of our young people and students here tonight come from a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines.

4.     We want to attract more young people like yourselves to consider joining the maritime industry, and to help grow Singapore’s position as a hub port and international maritime centre. There are emerging areas which are gaining importance in the maritime industry, and I believe would fit well with what many of our young people are looking for.

5.     A good example is environmental sustainability and decarbonisation, which was the focus of the challenge statements that you have worked on for this Case Summit. This is one of the defining challenges of our time, and the maritime sector must do our part to contribute to the global effort to reduce global carbon emissions. We are not the main contributor to global carbon emissions, but we are one of the contributing sectors. Therefore we have a responsibility to work together to try to bring down what the maritime sector is emitting. Hopefully, we can also spur some new innovations in the process that can be helpful to other sectors.

6.     Four companies from the maritime ecosystem and adjacent sectors have given our students a sample of the breadth and depth of some practical sustainability issues facing the maritime industry. Your teams took on challenges ranging from embedding the Poseidon Principles into ship financing; identifying likely decarbonisation technology winners and assessing the impact of such technologies on maritime safety; improving logistics processes; and greening maritime facilities to meet our sustainability goals.

7.     You were also asked to propose new low-carbon solutions and business models, so that the maritime sector can continue to do well as we do good for the environment. I would like to thank our industry partners for their strong support for this Case Summit – BHP, CMA CGM, Standard Chartered and Toll Group. You have posed very practical and thought-provoking challenges for our students, provided valuable mentorship to them and supported them to develop workable solutions for the industry.

8.     Beyond sustainability, the maritime sector also offers a range of other exciting areas for career growth and development. For example, our port will increasingly leverage on new technologies, like automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, so that it can operate more efficiently, sustainably, and safely.

9.     Allow me to provide an example. In the past, in order to operate quay cranes at our ports, crane operators would need to climb all the way to the top of the crane to operate it from within. This was a physically demanding job with long hours and was especially tough for older workers. This made it hard to attract people to take on the job. But PSA has redesigned and transformed this job over the years. With the use of technology, the operator no longer needs to climb all the way up the crane to operate it. Instead, the cranes can be operated from the air-conditioned comfort of a control room on the ground. And the worker also becomes more productive – instead of one operator operating a single crane, he can now operate multiple cranes at once. So this smart use of technology, coupled with business process redesign, is a win-win solution. It is a win for PSA as the port operator, as its workers become more productive. It is a win for the workers, because it is safer and more pleasant.

10.    We will need a range of talents to help us make these changes. We need software engineers, data analysts and AI experts, in addition to port operations managers, mechanical and electrical engineers, as well as experienced seafarers, to keep our next-generation port running smoothly. We will also need logistics experts and supply chain managers to handle and optimise the complex cargo flows through our hub port. As the world’s largest trans-shipment port, we contribute to more efficient supply chains with lower emissions compared to ships travelling from point-to-point.

11.    To illustrate, in order to send cargo from ten ports in Europe directly to twenty ports in Asia, you would need ten times twenty, or two hundred journeys in total. In contrast, transhipment hubs like Singapore enable cargo from multiple sources that are headed for the same destination to be consolidated. Thus, you would only need ten connections from Europe to Singapore, plus twenty connections from Singapore to the ports in Asia, to achieve the same outcome in thirty journeys that would otherwise have taken two hundred.

12.    Fewer journeys means lower emissions and lower costs for consumers. The hub-and-spoke model that Singapore offers as a transhipment port makes the flow of goods cheaper, faster and better for the environment. But it is also more complex than point-to-point shipping. To do transhipment efficiently, PSA has to figure out how to optimise vessel and cargo movements to minimise unnecessary crane movements. This process may become so complex that it could become for humans to handle unaided, no matter how many people we hire or how bright they are. This is where the smart use of technology can help us.

13.    To enable more youths to learn about maritime issues and the many exciting career opportunities in our sector, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, supported by the Singapore Maritime Foundation, will be rolling out the MaritimeSG Youth Ambassadors Programme.

14.    We will be appointing our first batch of Youth Ambassadors next month. They will be helping us to organise events in their schools to raise awareness and provide more information about the maritime sector to their peers. I hope some of you in our audience tonight will consider taking up this meaningful role, to become our Youth Ambassadors.

15.    Allow me to conclude with two parting thoughts related to mountain summits, in the spirit of the Maritime Case Summit Challenge. First, we as a collective people need to focus not just on scaling one mountain, but rather to ascend multiple peaks of excellence. Through a combined effort across different areas, we can transform our ecosystem and our industry. We will work with industry partners and Institutes of Higher Learning to empower our young people to develop multiple peaks of excellence.

16.    Second, while some of you may be on the summit of a high mountain today, there will always be a higher mountain. There is always the next higher peak to scale, and the next higher mountain to conquer. We can never be complacent and think that we have arrived. Singapore may be the world’s largest transshipment hub and leading International Maritime Centre now, but if we take this for granted then it will be the start of our decline. We must always remind ourselves that our achievements today are the result of many years of hard work and continued investment. It is like rowing a boat in a fast-flowing river – if you don’t keep rowing forward, the currents will sweep you back. Many people are looking and learning from what we have done. We must also be humble enough to recognize that there are many talented people from around the world.

17.    As individuals, we may not be better, smarter, or quicker than our counterparts from other countries. But what we can do to stay ahead is not just to invest in individual talents, but more importantly, to create a system to bring these talents to work well together. We may not be able to out-compete our counterparts as individuals, but taken together as an ecosystem, by integrating our strengths, pulling in the same direction, and forging strong partnerships, we can make sure that Maritime Singapore stays ahead.

18.    Congratulations to the winning teams, and I look forward to hearing your presentations and to learn more about your ideas and proposals.

19.    Thank you.