On November 29, 2016, the third edition of the annual ESC Maritime Day was held in Barcelona.

The event was organised by the European Shippers’ Council and Transprime in cooperation with widoit QUALITY, and was kindly hosted and sponsored by the Port of Barcelona.  The ESC Maritime Day is set to be the annual reference marine logistics event for shippers in Europe, with previously organised Maritime Days in Brussels (2014) and Antwerp (2015). Each event contains the synthesis and conclusions extracted from previous years to openly discuss the maritime world with all stakeholders from a unique shipper’s perspective and to build new ways of thinking ahead of the current scenario.
The event in Barcelona gathered almost 100 participants and offered shippers the opportunity to focus specifically on two issues: SOLAS: A new relationship status between stakeholders (Roundtable 1) and Alliances and cooperation (Roundtable 2).
During the SOLAS Round table, the presentations from the high-level speakers from INNTRA, Cosco Iberia, Terminal BEST BARCELONA, BDP International and DOW Chemical raised interesting discussions. With the SOLAS regulation a new relationship has emerged within the logistics sector, for example a connection between shippers and terminal operators. This highly debated topics showed a huge need for harmonisation in several fields by all the participants of the conference.
During the Roundtable on Alliances and Cooperation, with participation of high level speakers from DG COMPETITION, Barcelona Port, and University of Antwerp among others, concerns were raised regarding the competition in the maritime sector. It appears that there is an urgent request to the competition authorities for a new approach in monitoring competition in the maritime sector around the world.
Next ESC Maritime Day will be held in November next year and will give a chance to look back at the modifications in the alliances situation in 2017.