Willem Vermaat, shipping director at Heidelberg Materials Trading, has delivered a sharp assessment of the shipping industry’s growing dependence on technology, arguing that digitalisation alone is not solving the sector’s long-standing operational problems.
Speaking from the cargo side of the dry bulk market, where cement, clinker, aggregates and solid fuels are transported globally, Vermaat said much of today’s maritime technology landscape is simply accelerating the circulation of poor-quality information rather than improving decision-making.
“There’s a phrase I’ve been using lately that tends to get a reaction in a room full of shipping people: ‘garbage in, garbage out we’ve just made the garbage move faster’,” Vermaat explained.
According to him, while shipping companies continue to invest heavily in advanced digital platforms and analytics tools, the industry is still relying on data that is often inaccurate, incomplete or intentionally managed for commercial advantage.
Vermaat acknowledged that connectivity and platform capabilities have improved significantly in recent years. However, he argued that many of the core operational inputs feeding those systems remain unreliable.
He pointed to vessel ETA reporting as one of the clearest examples. In many cases, estimated arrival times are adjusted throughout the chain for commercial reasons rather than operational accuracy. Masters may add safety buffers, operators may extend them further, and additional stakeholders often continue the same practice, making reliable scheduling increasingly difficult.
Terminal transparency also remains limited, he noted, with many ports unwilling to disclose real berth productivity figures. Cargo owners themselves often delay sharing cargo readiness information because market participants still view operational data as a competitive advantage.
Vermaat referenced findings from a 2024 World Bank study showing that despite electronic data exchange mandates, only one-third of more than 100 surveyed ports were fully compliant with reporting standards.
The study also highlighted persistent issues with AIS reporting. Around 36% of AIS messages reportedly contain no ETA information at all, while approximately half of those that do provide ETA data are inaccurate either due to operational mistakes or deliberate manipulation.
For Vermaat, the growing industry focus on “interoperability” and increasingly connected platforms risks creating the illusion of progress without solving the underlying issue.
“Interoperability is the latest buzzword being used to sell platforms,” he said, while acknowledging that the technology itself is often highly sophisticated.
The real concern, according to Vermaat, is that unreliable inputs inevitably produce unreliable outputs, regardless of how advanced the systems appear on the surface.
He also criticised the industry’s tendency to prioritise presentation over substance, arguing that real-time dashboards and polished analytics tools often fail to answer the operational questions that truly matter commercially.
“The industry has started confusing the sophistication of the presentation layer with the reliability of the underlying data,” he said.
While technology now makes it easier to analyse past performance in detail, Vermaat argued that shipping companies still struggle to obtain dependable real-time answers to critical commercial questions, such as whether a cargo programme should be delayed or maintained as scheduled.
Despite his criticism, Vermaat insisted he remains optimistic about the potential of digitalisation in shipping. He described himself as “a friendly sceptic, not a cynical one,” stressing that future efficiency gains in dry bulk shipping will depend less on smarter algorithms and more on trustworthy, standardised and transparent reporting practices.
He concluded by suggesting that the industry may need stronger contractual frameworks encouraging transparency and greater cooperation across the supply chain, arguing that the sector’s biggest challenge is ultimately commercial trust rather than technological capability.
“Fix what goes in. Everything else follows.”
