Shipping Industry

The perfect storm that has been buffeting the shipping industry—overcapacity, consolidation, stagnating revenues, and declining profitability—is intensifying. Today’s new reality has ratcheted up the existing threats. Uncertainty is further hampering demand and escalating trade volatility, and digital technology and innovative business models threaten to disrupt the entire shipping industry and incumbents in particular. Meanwhile, climate change will accelerate these competitive forces and heighten cost pressures.

To ensure their long-term survival, shipping companies must undertake a transformation that digitizes business and fleet operations and prioritizes climate action. Working in partnership with our shipping consultants, they can devise new offerings and new ways of working within and along the transportation and logistics value chain to gain efficiencies, reduce emissions, save costs, and serve new markets and customers.

Our experienced shipping consultants help firms integrate digital tools and capabilities and introduce advanced cargo-management systems to allow liners to move into higher-margin parts of the supply chain. Our digital expertise further helps our shipping industry clients find smooth end-to-end logistics solutions and new ways to collaborate across the shipping logistics ecosystem. We help our clients move beyond their core businesses and harness digital to add new capabilities, increase efficiencies, and reduce costs.

• Revenue Management. Robust analytics unlock dynamic pricing and contract portfolio optimization with significant revenue-enhancement opportunities.
• Advanced Analytics and Control-Tower Fleet Monitoring. On-board sensors and millions of data points help reduce costs through continuous performance optimization for routing and vessels, predictive maintenance, and empty-container repositioning.
• Blockchain Technology. With blockchain, the industry can streamline and secure the documentation process.
• Digital Lead Management. Connected market intelligence and lead management allows shipping liners to leverage the broad network of agencies and significantly increase customer bases.
• Multimodal Collaboration Platform. Exchanging information among liners, terminals, and intermodal companies can improve the efficiency of port calls and the connection with intermodal transportation.

The growing focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments and practices is transforming the business environment for ports and the shipping industry in several key ways:

• Bottom-Line Improvements. Our shipping consultants help companies examine and make investments that will secure them a more financially and environmentally sustainable future. For example, we help analyze the bottom-line impact of scrubbing technologies that bring high-sulfur fuels into compliance with IMO 2020 and of alternative fuels that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Regulatory Requirements. Ports are also under renewed pressure to become carbon-free, reduce noise, and embrace electrification.
• Top-Line Growth. Beyond government regulations, shippers and ports alike face a mandate from customers, many of which seek emissions data as part of their requests for tenders. The companies that deliver environmentally sustainable offerings stand to capture not only new markets and customer segments but price premiums as well.

Our shipping strategy team helps shipping companies and ports transform their organizations to reduce emissions, win on new sustainability metrics, and thrive in this new environment.