People power will drive the maritime industry through the biggest period of change the sector has ever seen, according to industry leaders who came together at the International Shipowning and Shipmanagement Summit (ISSS) during London International Shipping Week 2025.
The theme of the event, which brought together some of the industry’s heavy hitters, was ‘Managing the winds of change in global shipping’.
CEO of Anglo Eastern Bjorn Hojgaard commented: “I have learned one thing over 30 years; ships may be built of steel, but seafaring is built on people. The truth is the winds will change – you can’t control the wind but you can control the sails. We don’t fight with the wind, we work with it.”
He concedes that technology will matter but believes people will matter more. “Data doesn’t keep ships sailing, people do.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Mark O’Neil, president and CEO of Columbia Group.
“We need to tear up the rule book and create a much more personalised approach. Everyone is in the same boat,” he said.
What’s crucial, in the view of Luis Benito, CCO of Wallem Group, is the importance of a common direction.
“Shipping adapts to change,” he said. “We are all here because we can adapt together. We all have to adapt to technological change – safety is not negotiable, everything else is secondary.”
There was consensus that the only constant in shipping is change. “The only way to weather the storm is to embrace the change and rethink the way we work,” said René Kofod-Olsen, chief executive officer of V Group.
“We cannot ‘silo’ the way we work. That has to change. Scale matters now more than ever; all the complexities need a scalability.”
The panel agreed that the issue was too big for only one party to tackle alone. “If we multiply our resilience across the industry, we can jointly collect our intelligence and not rely on fragmented data.
“We should not fear the storm, but use the wind to steer new courses.”
