On June 10, Annick De Ridder, the transport minister of ⁠the Flanders region, made the announcement through a post on the popular micro-blogging platform X (formerly Twitter), stating, “I just signed the approval that allows Tesla to roll ‌out ⁠its technology after the company successfully carried out a series of tests in the country.”

⁠Authorizations granted in one of the three Belgian regions are considered valid in all ⁠the country’s territories. This came just a day after the EV giant securing a similar approval in Denmark. The Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia have already taken similar steps.

In Denmark, the Danish Road Traffic Authority granted provisional approval after reviewing the original type approval issued by the Dutch vehicle authority (RDW) on April 10, 2026. As per the reports, individual countries are now bypassing slower European Union-wide harmonization processes, accelerating the FSD’s deployment.

FSD Supervised comes with advanced driver assistance capabilities, including automatic steering, acceleration, braking, lane changes, and navigation through complex urban and rural environments. Tesla has designed the system for supervised use, making sure drivers get the opportunity to take over the vehicle’s control if the mechanism doesn’t perform as per their expectations, especially in situations like rain, night driving, and varied road types.

Early data from the Netherlands, the first EU member nation that approved the FSD’s launch within its territory, highlighted strong safety performance.

Between April 10 and June 5, vehicles using FSD Supervised recorded 3.5 times fewer collisions than manual driving overall, with zero crashes reported on highways across more than 16.6 million kilometers driven. As part of its European push, Tesla now has reached 12 countries with FSD supervised availability.

In Denmark, owners with compatible hardware, especially newer vehicles equipped with Hardware 4 (HW4), may gain the FSD’s access first, though exact timelines and eligibility details are not clear yet.

After securing regulatory nods in four European markets in just two months, the FSD technology is steadily advancing toward wider availability across the continent. The Elon Musk-led automaker is looking to refine the system further through ongoing data collection and software iterations.

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Edwin Paalvast, the executive board member and head of international markets at Philips, was present when Bandar Alkhorayef visited the company’s Eindhoven facility. They talked about boosting collaboration in the field of medical devices and bringing this crucial sector to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of the Saudi minister’s visit to the Netherlands was to strengthen ties and create partnerships in a range of industrial activities between the two nations.

During his visit, Alkhorayef met with FrieslandCampina, a prominent company specialising in dairy products and their byproducts. Conversations were held with Marchel Gorselink, the head of research and development at FrieslandCampina, to discuss the possibility of setting up a research and development hub in the Kingdom to improve the quality of local production and food processing.

The minister also held discussions with David Haines, the CEO of Upfield, regarding potential collaboration in consumer goods and plant-based food manufacturing. They exchanged knowledge to help achieve food security objectives and promote environmental sustainability.

The purpose of this visit is to support growth pathways in promising industries between the two countries and to complement Saudi Arabia’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the role of its mining and industrial sectors in the national economy. Along with increasing the penetration of Saudi non-oil exports into Dutch and European markets, it also aims to draw in high-calibre investments.

Alkhorayef concentrated on bolstering bilateral trade relations and investigating cooperation opportunities in industry, mining, trade, and investment during his meetings with Dutch ministers, including the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development, Liesje Schreinemacher, and the Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, Micky Adriaansens.

They also talked about forming strategic alliances in a number of industries, such as manufacturing, cutting-edge technology, and renewable energy.

The visit showcases Saudi Arabia’s distinct prospects and competencies in the mining and industrial domains, in addition to its environmental preservation endeavours and climate change programmes, including the Saudi Green and Middle East Green initiatives.

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Reporting on the development, The Economist reported, “Ten times a second an object shaped like a thick pizza box and holding a silicon wafer takes off three times faster than a manned rocket. For a few milliseconds, it moves at a constant speed before being halted abruptly with astonishing precision—within a single atom of its target. This is not a high-energy physics experiment.”

On January 5th, American semiconductor giant Intel became the first owner of ASML’s latest technical marvel, which it will use for assembling chips at its Oregon factory.

ASML hits a jackpot

As January 2024 passed by, ASML closed at a record high after its orders more than tripled. Order bookings rose to a record €9.19 billion ($9.98 billion) in the fourth quarter from €2.6 billion in July to September 2023, driven by demand for ASML’s most sophisticated chip making machines.

What makes ASML’s presence crucial for the semiconductor industry is that the company is the only one which produces the equipment needed to make the semiconductors.

ASML has also been witnessing record orders for its ultraviolet lithography machines as Intel, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) are all lining up to induct the tool in their production ranks.

“ASML also benefited from strong demand from China last year (in 2023) as chipmakers there rushed to get lithography machines ahead of Dutch export rules meant to hobble Beijing’s semiconductor ambitions. The rise in Chinese demand helped offset the effects of a global chip industry slowdown on ASML, which is the only producer of the equipment needed to produce most advanced semiconductors,” Bloomberg noted.

China accounted for 39% of ASML’s sales in the fourth quarter and became the Veldhoven-based company’s largest market in 2023.

However, ASML has been targeted by the United States in the latter’s effort to curb exports of cutting-edge technology to China. In 2023 itself, Joe Biden’s administration urged the Netherlands government to prevent ASML from shipping chip making devices to China without a license. US officials also reached out to ASML and gave similar directions to the venture, as per Bloomberg reports.

And as the West keeps on preventing companies from its shores from supplying cutting-edge tech to Beijing, ASML too has fallen in line by restricting its China exports. The venture now expects as much as 15% of its China sales in 2024 to be affected by the new export control measures.

Why ASML is so special?

Apart from its cutting-edge chip making products, the Dutch venture is also known for its market value being quadrupling since 2019, to €260 billion ($285 billion), thereby ensuring that the company stays as Europe’s most valuable technology firm. Between 2012 and 2022, ASML’s sales and net profit both rose roughly four-fold, to €21 billion and €6 billion respectively.

“In late 2023, ASML’s operating margin exceeded 34%, staggering for a hardware business and more than that of Apple, the world’s biggest maker of consumer electronics,” stated the Economist.

You can say that Silicon Valley still leads the innovation race, but none of its innovations will see the daylight if they don’t get powered by cutting-edge semiconductors. That’s where ASML comes in handy, by holding the monopoly over this critical supply chain. And the West needs to be thankful because ASML is a Netherlands-based venture, not a China-based one.

The global semiconductor sales are predicted to double to $1.3 trillion by 2032. However, the US-led Western Bloc will be looking to ensure that Beijing doesn’t get the cherry. So ASML’s business will depend to some extent on geopolitical developments, but to its credit, the company has created a network of suppliers and technology partners across Europe, that itself looks like a well-oiled lucrative industrial vertical.

“Its business model ingeniously combines hardware with software and data. These unsung elements of ASML’s success challenge the notion that the old continent is incapable of developing a successful digital platform,” the Economist commented further.

ASML’s complex machines project chip blueprints onto photosensitive silicon wafers. In 1986, when the Dutch venture delivered its first machinery model, individual transistors measured micrometres and its kit almost looked like a glorified photocopier, states Dutch journalist Marc Hijink.

Jump forward to 2024, with transistors being shrunk by a factor of a thousand, ASML lithography gear has emerged as the most sophisticated equipment ever sold commercially.

ASML and its partners pulled off the shrinking trick through some engineering manoeuvring. It involved powerful lasers incinerating droplets of molten tin, each no thicker than a fifth of a human hair and travelling at over 250kph. The process produces extremely short-wavelength light, which then smoothly gets reflected by a set of mirrors. ASML’s latest lithography gear costs over $300 million and exposes enough semiconductors. The object that holds the silicon wafer (known as a ‘table’) accelerates faster than a rocket and comes to a stop at exactly the right spot.

Entering ASML’s supply network

Economist paid a visit to ASML’s Berlin factory, where the venture makes the ‘mirror blocks’, which serve as the main part of a wafer table.

“These are sturdy pieces of a special ceramic material, a square 8cm thick and measuring about 50cm on each side. Some get polished, measured, repolished, remeasured and so on, for nearly a year—until they are exactly the right shape, including allowances for the fact that they will sag by a few nanometres once installed,” the media house noted further.

The factory’s owner, Berliner Glas, was acquired by ASML in 2020. Berliner Glas, along with 800 other firms (mostly European), helped put together ASML’s machines. ASML owns stakes in only a few of these businesses, meaning most of these ventures operate as independent units, while being part of ASML’s massive manufacturing ecosystem.

ASML outsources over 90% of its manufacturing workloads and directly employs less than half the estimated 100,000 people required for its operations.

This is due to the fact that ASML, during its spin-off in 1984 from the Dutch electronics giant Philips, did not possess its in-house production lines. Since then it has been relying upon specialist component suppliers.

Also, manufacturing the various parts of the lithography machine is cutting-edge in itself. Carrying out all these functions can easily overwhelm ASML. Also, semiconductor economics preaches the decentralisation of the production networks.

In this particular industry, demand moves up and down in the blink of an eye. With the tech sector steadily moving towards the ‘Everything AI’ kind of future, semiconductors will be in great demand in the coming years.

The sector is very much prone to supply chain gluts. So the industry stakeholders are now outsourcing some of the component manufacturing duties to its suppliers, which can limit the fallouts by catering to customers working in different business cycles.

The practice which ASML started in 1984, has now become a phenomenon called ‘Hyper-Specialisation’, which prevents the risk-reducing double sourcing (practice of using two suppliers for a given component, raw material, product or service).

“In the case of ASML, technical demands are so high and production volumes so low (it shipped 317 machines in 2022) that it would be uneconomical to manage several suppliers for a single part even if they could be found. For such crucial components as lasers and mirrors, which are made by Trumpf and Zeiss, two German firms, respectively, it is impossible,” Wayne Allan, who is in charge of sourcing on ASML’s board, told The Economist.

Approaching things smartly

ASML mostly limits itself to designing the architect of its cutting-edge semiconductor-making tools. After that, the venture decides who (suppliers) does what, apart from defining the interfaces between the main parts of its machines (modules) and carrying out the required research and development activities.

This simplified workload helps the venture to test the machine equipment, certify and assemble them, followed by the transportation of the finished products. The suppliers have also been encouraged to experiment with technologies. The whole thing works on two Ts: ‘Trust’ and ‘Transparency’.

Information flows freely throughout the supply chain. As engineering teams from different firms work together, ideas and patents get shared, along with financial data and profits. Also, suppliers engage in healthy competition with each other.

If a supplier runs into operational trouble, ASML proactively intervenes to ease things out. If the trouble is bigger in size, then the venture ends up buying the supplier, as it did with Berliner Glas.

Can anyone challenge ASML?

ASML’s manufacturing ecosystem is something to envy about. It is a loosely coupled structure that ensures the operational autonomy and financial well-being of all the component suppliers. The whole model is well-oiled enough to outperform an entire industrial vertical.

ASML is now trying to consolidate its market dominance by complementing its chip making hardware with software and data. The goal is to further refine the ‘Wafer Table’ in the lithography machines. The process will be performed through data mining and machine learning. In that way, ASML will make itself into some sort of AI venture too.

Of the 5,500 devices ASML has sold since 1984, 95% are still in operation and many even send data back to the venture’s Dutch headquarters. These data then get used to fine-tune the products further, which in turn leads to higher semiconductor production ratios and generates even more data to help digital services like the Internet and Internet of Things (IoTs) to perform stronger.

“If rivals cannot topple ASML, can anything? Maybe physics. Even with the best AI, you can’t shrink transistors forever (certainly not in a commercially viable way). If technical requirements become too otherworldly the supplier network may unravel. Or maybe economics. Chipmakers may recoil at ASML’s data hunger, which extends to other linked devices in their factories. Some are pushing back against its digital expansion, insiders say,” The Economist noted.

“Then there is geopolitics. ASML’s share price dipped after news broke about the cancelled deliveries to China. The worry is less over lower sales; ASML cannot build its machines fast enough anyway. Of greater concern is the risk that strict export controls could in time push China to build its own chipmaking-gear industry. That could one day threaten ASML’s position at the centre of the sector. For the time being, though, the company’s network and its network effects remain indomitable. Who said Europe couldn’t do tech?” it concluded.

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Assistive navigation and data-sharing technologies are making the shipping industry more competitive, safer and sustainable. Smart shipping’s operating principle revolves around the autonomous movement of inland vessels/seagoing ships.

The holistic concept covers the on-board vessel technologies and the design of ports and waterways, in order to ensure that the data collected by sensors (installed in an operational smart shipping environment), can help the vessel to either manoeuvre autonomously or prompt the crew to take action.

Understanding the concept further

Smart shipping is all about allowing the vessels to sail more efficiently, and in the long run, making the commercial maritime sector more competitive and investment-worthy. Devices like alarm monitoring, power management, dynamic positioning, integrated navigation suite and electronic engines ensure that the crew members are deployed and performing their tasks as effectively as possible.

While the concept of ‘Smart Shipping’ may give us hints about ‘Futuristic Vessels’, it isn’t the case all the time.

“First of all, a smart ship doesn’t refer to a specific type of ship but rather to the capacities of the vessel. Definitions of smart shipping vary and cover a range of smart concepts and technologies. Autonomous vessels are considered smartships, but not all smartships are autonomous,” said Marine & Offshore.

Smartships optimise onboard and onshore operational processes through digitisation. Crucial subsystems of the vessel are becoming digital, backed by data harnessing and analysing capabilities to assist the crew in conducting informed decision-making.

Whether to increase/decrease the ship’s speed on a particular waterway or to generate more data on the travel route, smart shipping helps maritime professionals to undertake quick decision-making, decisions which affect things like transport costs.

For smart shipping to be successful, the ability of data to be processed, contextualised and transformed into useful information for the right person at the right time is very crucial here. Customised dashboards, insight-generating solutions, notifications and alerts come together and give the smart shipping ecosystem its desired shape. These solutions predict and simulate optimised scenarios to gain a better profile and analysis of the ship’s performance and support operational decisions.

“So if a ship uses connected tech and churns out data, it’s a smart ship, right? Not necessarily. It’s true that each shipping company, from vessels to onshore operations, is a potential goldmine of data. But, several more factors are vital in turning data points into useful information, including data quality, real-time integration, contextualisation and sharing. A mountain of data points does not make a smart ship – but timely valuable information for the right person does,” Marine & Offshore explained the fluidity of the concept further.

An ocean of opportunities

While it will be a natural tendency to term anything denoted with ‘smart’ with entities like autonomy, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, ‘Smart Shipping’ is much more than that.

“By transforming a mass of data into action, ships become smart and can reap the benefits. Only with an accurate profile of the ship’s performance, can owners and operators optimise their operations. Through enhanced monitoring, they can measure the improvements, analyse and compare scenarios and define efficient strategies. This gives owners greater visibility and results in time and cost savings,” Bureau Veritas said.

Smartships partly automate data entry and reporting processes, apart from ensuring greater accuracy. Ship owners can then analyse the data and evaluate measures to improve their vessels’ efficiency and sustainability, from voyage planning and weather routing to optimising onboard machinery controls and maintenance planning. Also, the commercial shipping sector can use the above solution to meet emission reduction targets as well.

Discussing smart shipping’s role in the maritime industry’s future can give the impression of a homogenous digital solution for all vessels. But that is not the case.

In fact, ‘Smart Shipping’ doesn’t come with a ‘one size fits all’ approach as the degree of digitalisation and data quality management, in most cases, vary as per factors like vessel type, operations to location and business models.

“Classification plays an important role in facilitating the shift toward smart shipping and supporting maritime stakeholders’ effective adoption of data-driven processes,” says Bureau Veritas, which itself has developed and deployed Smart Shipping solutions to its clients.

The Netherlands, for example, has been proactive in embracing smart shipping solutions. The country, which reportedly encounters 140 accidents every year on its waterways, is now enhancing the maritime safety game with ‘Smart Warning and Navigation Systems’, where technology is now assisting the ship skippers to perform the necessary tasks during their journey and in that process, bringing down the threat called ‘Human Errors’.

Smart Shipping technologies can coordinate a ship’s navigation plan with the opening and closing times of locks and bridges, and take account of the available mooring space in harbours and port terminals while using the environmental data to help a vessel adapt to its speed as per the weather conditions and save fuel.

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has now allowed the trials of Smart Shipping methods on its inland and territorial waterways. These trials will help the country to determine its policy direction on the overall shipping industry.

Practical examples

In September 2023, news emerged about maritime industry player Ascenz Marorka being awarded a contract from LNG shipping services provider GasLog, under which the latter’s fleet of over 35 LNG carriers will be upgraded with Ascenz Marorka’s ‘Smart Shipping2 Solution’. The contract revolves around the integration of high-frequency sensor data and manually reported data, along with a comprehensive set of online applications for managing, monitoring and optimising the energy and environmental performance of GasLog’s ships.

In August 2023, South Korea saw the arrival of an LNG-powered bulk carrier, fitted with artificial intelligence (AI)-based machinery monitoring and safety systems. HL Nambu 2, built by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, is claimed to be the first ship in the world to reportedly sport AI engineers, in the form of HiCBM, an integrated ship status monitoring solution, and HiCAMS, an integrated safety control solution. These two systems diagnose the ship equipment in real-time and automatically recognise emergencies like onboard fire.

In July 2023, a new partnership to incorporate blockchain technology into marine energy trading was launched by British multinational professional services network Deloitte, marine solution provider KPI OceanConnect and payment services provider ZTLment. These three parties entered into a collaboration on the creation of a digital platform for trading carbon credits in the shipping industry.

Two months after that, a government-level £1.5 million fund was initiated to enable feasibility studies for planned green shipping corridors between the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. These green shipping corridors will see the operation of low/zero emission vessels.

Introducing ‘SmartShipping’

Let’s discuss ‘SmartShipping by Komorebi’, an AI-powered tool that optimises maritime transport operations while reducing its environmental impact through weather routing and performance optimisation.

Maritime traffic, as of October 2023, is producing 2.5% of the planet’s total CO2 emissions. While the International Maritime Organisation aims to reduce the stat by 40% before 2030, the industry also faces the situation where fuel is occupying some 60% of the total operational cost of sea transport, thereby pushing the bill in this area to €120 Billion per year. The sector is looking for ‘Route Optimisation’ to save 3-10% of the current fuel expenditure figures. And last but not least sailing under adverse weather conditions is causing 48% of total maritime casualties. ‘SmartShipping by Komorebi’ has emerged as an answer for the above industry challenges through its ‘Data Driven Optimisation Model’.

The innovation uses advanced mathematical models to accurately simulate the interaction of waves, currents and wind on a specific vessel while combining the evolutionary optimisation algorithms and gradient descent variation methods to find the optimal route according to the user-defined criteria.

“Oceanographic and weather conditions are constantly changing, so optimal routes will change every day. Also on a given day, the optimal route will be different for each vessel. All our data are daily updated from main weather and ocean data providers,” commented ‘SmartShipping by Komorebi’, while explaining the product.

In conclusion, ‘Smart Shipping’ heralds a transformative era for the maritime industry. Beyond mere autonomy, it’s a nuanced blend of digitalisation and data management tailored to each vessel’s unique needs. From enhancing safety in Dutch waterways to AI-equipped LNG carriers, real-world applications are diverse. The ‘SmartShipping by Komorebi’ initiative exemplifies how AI, weather routing, and performance optimisation can drive efficiency, sustainability, and cost savings—a crucial course for an industry navigating the seas of innovation.

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The seven biggest consumers of petrol in the EU—Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Poland—reduced their overall consumption by 22% from October to December of 2022.

Much of this decrease was reportedly due to milder temperatures; between October and December of 2022 compared to a similar timeframe during 2021, the average number of heating degree days in each country decreased by about 16%, Reuters market analyst John Kemp said in his opinion piece.

However, there was also a slight decrease in underlying temperature-adjusted consumption, which can be attributed to consumer backlash against high costs, public relations initiatives to reduce demand, and business closures, he stated further.

The area saw an abnormally warm October in 2022, and none of the big consumer nations made any substantial headway in lowering underlying demand, Kemp added.

However, more progress was being made in reducing underlying usage as the weather got colder in November and December of 2022.

Germany, the primary user in the area, experienced a 5% increase in heating degree days in December 2022 compared to December 2021.

Nonetheless, use per degree day was reduced by 19%, ensuring that the overall consumption was still down by 14% over the previous year.

On the other hand, December was mild in Italy, the second-largest consumer in the region, with 18% fewer degree days.

Nonetheless, the nation also succeeded in cutting consumption by 8% each degree day, resulting in a 24% decrease in overall consumption.

Every nation decreased its temperature-adjusted consumption in December, with reductions ranging from 19% in Germany and Spain to 17% in Belgium and the Netherlands, 13% in Poland, 11% in France, and 8% in Italy.

Energy-intensive businesses, such as those producing chemicals, fertiliser, steel, ceramics, glass, smelters, and greenhouse horticulture, have been under the most pressure to adapt.

Short-time working and plant closures have caused consumption in several industries to drop significantly, leading to significant gas conservation.

The upshot is that savings by electricity producers and families have been relatively small after accounting for the warm winter because the burden is falling so heavily on the industry.

The weather was kind to European nations, and industry bore an excessive amount of the cost of lowering demand.

The following winter might not be as mild, and without a permanent loss of capacity, the industry cannot continue to bear the majority of the demand decrease.

If temperatures return to being more in line with the long-term normal, households may need to reduce consumption even more next winter.

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According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that were made public six months after the war began, Britain’s imports from Russia fell by 97% in June and amounted to barely £33 million when sanctions went into effect.

As per ONS data, the United Kingdom government had already accomplished its goal of gradually ceasing imports of Russian oil by the end of 2022 and of liquefied natural gas as soon as practicable beyond that date.

The United Kingdom imported fuel from Russia on average in the 12 months prior to the conflict, but this amount has now fallen to zero, marking the first time this has happened since modern records began in 1997.

According to the ONS, the United Kingdom has made up for this by bringing in more refined oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, imports of other Russian commodities, notably vodka, have also completely disappeared.

In addition to significant further tariffs on some items, bans were issued on a variety of Russian products, including iron and steel, silver, gold, high-end goods, and wood products.

Due to the fact that some products, like pharmaceuticals, were excluded from the sanctions regime put in place following the invasion on February 24, exports from the United Kingdom to Russia also dropped dramatically albeit to a lower amount than imports.

Exports, according to the ONS, were £83 million in June, a 67% decrease from the £251 million a month on average over the previous year leading up to the conflict.

Between February and June, exports of the majority of goods to Russia fell precipitously, with industrial and transport equipment exports falling by £118 million (91.3%).

The sole export to Russia that had an increase during this time was chemicals, which saw a growth of £39.1 million (61.8%) in exports of pharmaceutical and medical items.

The ONS stated that self-sanctioning, in which traders voluntarily seek alternatives to Russian goods, is also likely a factor, and that the United Kingdom government’s economic sanctions are “likely to have caused the decreases in imports from and exports to Russia.”

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Similarly, American airliners are keen to put an end to the universal mask rule. A coalition of airlines led by United, Delta, and American airlines earlier last week had written to President Joe Biden to withdraw the federal order on the issue. They said, “Our industry has leaned into science at every turn. At the outset, we voluntarily implemented policies and procedures — mandating face coverings; requiring passenger health acknowledgments and contact tracing information, and enhancing cleaning protocols – to form a multi-layered approach to mitigate risk and prioritize the wellbeing of passengers and employees.”

It added, “However, much has changed since these measures were imposed and they no longer make sense in the current public health context. The persistent and steady decline of hospitalization and death rates are the most compelling indicators that our country is well protected against severe disease COVID-19.”

The White House is yet to react to the issue. Before this, the US Travel Association and one union of Southwest Airlines flight staff had also made similar requests.

Meanwhile, industry analysts believe that Canadian airlines may precede US counterparts in dropping this regulation in line with European carriers. In most other parts of the world, mask mandates by aircraft carriers remain with China introducing fresh restrictions in light of a fresh outbreak.

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The European Sustainable Technology Innovation Centre is located in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It is reported that the centre will facilitate collaboration between researchers across borders. That said, it will also strengthen several development initiatives in the company’s business units. 

The new hub will undertake the initiative of developing all-new businesses with a strong focus on ‘lifestyle capabilities of Teijin’s core materials’, media reports said. Its focus will also extend to the development of green materials to support the global circular economy. 

Last week, the company had demonstrated its support for the Japan Climate Initiative’s call to revise its target renewable energy ratio for fiscal 2030, media reports said. 

The Japan Climate Initiative issued a statement on January 18 stating that the Japanese government is looking to increase its renewable energy target rate in the Strategic Energy Plan. The plan is slated for finalisation this year. Additionally, the statement encourages Japanese companies to play a prominent role in decarbonising the global industry and uplift their in-house goals to ambitious targets.

Several Japanese companies from Fujitsu to Toshiba signed a petition. In a joint statement, they said “In order for Japan to meet its responsibilities to be one of the leaders in global efforts (against climate change), the target needs to be much more ambitious. An ambitious target will stimulate renewable energy deployment, and Japanese companies will be able to play a greater role in the global business environment, where decarbonisation is accelerating.”

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Drydocks World, best known for building platforms for offshore oil and gas industry, is mainly into production engineering, construction, mechanical completion, sea fastening and engineering, procurement, load-out, pre-commissioning, commissioning assistance and construction commission for topside.

Capt. Rado Antolovic , CEO and Managing Director of  DP World Maritime Services Division said, “The role of renewables is continuing to gain prominence in the global energy market  and Drydocks World is well versed in the evolving technologies of offshore industry to develop this segment . Everyone at Drydocks World is committed to developing innovative solutions and keeping safety as our top priority”.

He further added, “We are pleased to be working with Petrofac and TenneT again, after previously completing several projects together for the North Sea. Our joint expertise and excellent team work have delivered important infrastructure for sustainable energy generation, and I look forward to many successful project milestones to come.”

The Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm is a large scale project, intended to supply green electricity to 1 to 1.5 million households.  It is expected to generate electricity by the end of 2022 and with a capacity of about 750 megawatts, will make a significant contribution to the Dutch ambition of having 4500 megawatts of installed capacity offshore by 2023.

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CEVA is a global logistics supply chain company headquartered in Hoofddorp, Netherlands. According to Tornos News, CMA CGM will purchase 25% of the company shares before its listing on a Swiss stock exchange in May.

The logistics sector has shown exponential growth in recent years.  A recent blog by Kenco reads “The supply chain is the backbone of a company: strong, flexible and supporting so many parts of the business. But in many ways, they’re also fragile: too much change or pressure and they’ll fracture, with wide-spread impact throughout the organization. Like all parts of business, new technologies, new processes and new ways of thinking will make them stronger, more efficient and more powerful. There’s both an art and science to how we drive innovation in our supply chains and drive it we must.”

This year’s Eye for Transport Global Logistics Report shows increased e-commerce growth, digitisation and cutting-edge technologies create better opportunities for the industry’s business model. Respondents said blockchain (52.7%), artificial intelligence (51.3%) and robotics (44.61%) largely transform the industry in order to sustain and introduce effective business values.

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