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One industry, three facets
What we often refer to, a bit casually, as the shipping industry in the Nordic-Baltic area, is in fact a three-headed phenomenon, each with wide effects on the community at large. These three facets of the industry are sharing the roots in seafaring, but have evolved along different tracks into three rather distinct clusters: Regional transport and logistics, into deepsea trading and into the maritime offshore business. Though the industry should speak with one voice in most cases, the conditions and challenges tend to differ, and this should be understood by the political level.

The maritime logistic systems, with elements like ferry and cargo services, ports, distribution and cargo-tracking, are essential to the economies of Sweden and Finland, and quite important to Norway and the Baltic nations. Deepsea trading, or simply international shipping, provides the basis for the Danish shipping industry and is still the main market for the Norwegian. Also Sweden, Finland and Latvia have a foot or two in the deepsea trades. The maritime offshore industry has become the driving one in Norway, but is also important in Denmark and to a lesser extent in Sweden.

These different aspects of sea transport and services share not only their ancestry, but also most of the challenges. They all draw heavily on the base of human competence, on equipment and technology, on entrepreneurship and innovation. The nature of the challenges does, however, differ from one sector to the other, and we should be aware of this.

The regional transport/logistic business is embedded in the overall EU transport policy and integrated in road or rail structures. The sector has been undergoing simplification and consolidation, the building of systems for high volumes of units or tailored for the individual industry group. There are still opportunities for innovation, but the main challenges are clearly related to the environment, both as to emissions, congestion and other strain imposed on the community. This is clearly the area that attracts the widest political interest.

The maritime offshore sector, which ranges from service and supply ships to drilling vessels and production/storage ships, has been subject to strong technological development for a couple of decades, and more so as offshore oil production is being confined to automated cells on the ocean floor and in deeper waters. Here, environmental protection is the keyword, but also cut in emissions. Politically, this is a hard issue, as the burning of oil and gas is the main source of greenhouse gases.

In contrast, international shipping relies on mature technology; safety and operational standards ensured by certified systems. This is the area of commercial networking and entrepreneurship. It is also an area ruled by international rules and regulations. Few politicians know anything about it, and fewer still care, except when an accident or oil spill happens.

The message is: The maritime transport and service industry reacts and adapts to commercial, technical and political influences. The biggest challenge for the industry is to make the political level understand its complexity, importance and potential.
The tools and objects may vary from Finland to Denmark, from Estonia to Norway, but basically a finely-tuned maritime transport policy is needed, based on the EU guidelines on transport, labour and taxation. As will be shown by the following articles, our industry offers a lot in importance and potential.

//Dag Bakka Jr