Blockchain opportunities in the maritime industry liner industry

• Main Author: Muhammad Imran Md Zin
• Other Authors: Chiu Sai Hoi, Benson
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Maritime studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/77916
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The maritime industry is investing its resources into a newly introduced disruptive technology called Blockchain Technology. Since the introduction of blockchain technology in 2017 by IBM-Maersk, it has grown to multiple blockchain initiatives in less than 3 years. Moreover, the usage of digital currency was introduced through the technology itself. These developments create both new opportunities and additional uncertainties into the future of the industry. With minimal research and mostly circulated news articles, there’s minimal analysis and consolidation on this technological development, especially in the liner industry. Hence, this paper aims to consolidate and analyse the developments of blockchain technology in the liner industry. It also aims to find out whether the industry is ready to use digital currency in their business processes. Firstly, after the introduction of blockchain technology by IBM-Maersk, the author observed that it has created a ripple effect within the liner industry. Out of the top 10 Container operators, there are 6 different blockchain initiatives to digitize the global trade (See Figure 5). Blockchain technology was supposed to be an industrial platform that connects all stakeholders within the industry. However, these initiatives are disconnected by different opinions and some of it does not correspond with their shipping alliances. To further support the research, holistic industry insights were gathered from the face-to-face interviews with industry professionals such as the blockchain developer, container operator, terminal operator, and academic research professor to impart discussions and critique existing blockchain initiatives. Secondly, as the technology is still within the early stage and divided by different blockchain designs, the adoption of it is hindered by a set of challenges due to the lack of standardisation within the international trade and the technology itself. Without overcoming these challenges, blockchain initiatives within the industry will never be interoperable and remain disconnected. The concept of Blockchain Roaming was introduced by the author (See Figure 13). Furthermore, the author has established four interoperability critical focus points that will overcome current challenges, namely: 1) Technical interoperability, 2) Semantics interoperability, 3) Legal interoperability and 4) Organisational interoperability. Lastly, a governing structure is required to enforce standardisation. However, the orchestrator needs to be impartial and trustable. The author has suggested a governing structure that will lead the required level of collaboration and addresses the critical focus points that will evolve the technology further (See Figure 14). These findings will contribute to the importance of blockchain interoperability that will expand the pipeline and lower barriers of entry in international trade, which will benefit everyone in the supply chain in the future.