Attendees converge on TOC Europe in record numbers

After 3 long years apart, TOC Europe – the Global AGM for Ports and Terminals, returned with a bang from 14-16^th June 2022. 

The event concluded with record attendance numbers, reflecting a pent-up desire from within the industry to return to real-world events following the pandemic. 3,500+ attendees descended on Rotterdam from over 80 nations across 3 days, to re-build those crucial relationships, share knowledge and be inspired by the innovation that the industry is embracing.  Feedback gathered so far has indicated that TOC Europe 2022 was a huge success.

To those of you who couldn't make it, thank you as well for your interest and we hope to be able to welcome you to one of our upcoming TOC events very soon.

In the meantime, here are some of the key event highlights:

Expanding on that theme, Lamia Kerdjoudj-Belkaid, Secretary-General of FEPORT, said its member companies have shown extraordinary resilience by learning the lessons from different disruptions in recent years. “We will never be back to normal again,” she warned.

After stating “Not all ports are as integrated as they like to think they are,” Dennis Koegeboehn, Partner at Hamburg Port Consulting demonstrated how two ports - Port of Charleston and Lyttleton Port of Christchurch – can prosper over time by reducing uncertainty and increasing control.

vertically integrated terminals?’, as well as offering an insightful overview of the Brazilian shipping climate. “Brazil is not the country of the future – we are here!” he exclaimed.

Following record attendance numbers for the first day of TOC Europe 2022 in Rotterdam, the doors opened for the second day where the focus was placed on sustainability. Aside from the business conversations taking place across the exhibition floor, the conference sessions again proved popular with attendees, featuring a plethora of leading experts addressing the challenges and opportunities in decarbonising maritime trade.

Speaking under the topic of Energy Transition, Ashley Woods, Head of Global Environmental Improvement at AP Moller Maersk showed examples and case studies of how urgent actions are being undertaken to decarbonise global shipping.

Douwe van der Stroom, a former environmental campaigner now steering Port of Rotterdam’s campaign to focus on efficiency and sustainability at the EU’s largest port, talked the attendees through its four pillars of energy transformation. Among them is the construction at Port of Rotterdam of a hydrogen production facility as well as a biomethanol production plant. “Our ambition is to become smarter and more sustainable,” he stated.

Electric? Hydrogen? Biofuel? Ammonia? The future beyond fossil fuels was at the heart of a round-table discussion between representatives from McKinsey & Co, AP Moller-Maersk, NOW GmbH, Port of Helsinki and TBA Group. Of course, the definitive answer is hard to predict, but the industry is urged to be ready to adapt and then adopt whichever alternative prevails.

Looking outside of Europe, TOC Europe also shone the spotlight on Morocco and Brazil.

Morocco’s Tanger Med Port Authority was of particular interest to the delegates.

Mr Hassan Abkari, Director General, explained how the strategic location of the port on the Strait of Gibraltar – that guarantees direct zero-deviation access to the major East/West and North/South shipping lines – has enabled a major expansion of recent years, which now brings a facility with a handling capacity of 9 million TEU and connectivity to 180 ports and 70 countries.  Tanger Med Port Authority is now Africa’s leading gateway port and as such, will host to our exciting new event the inaugural TOC Africa in 2023.

Terminal Automation, Moffatt & Nichol, and Sven Daniels, Partner & Product Manager for Digitalisation at HPC Hamburg Port Consulting.

The discussions concluded with a debate on the harmonization of digital standards moderated by Pascal Ollivier, President of Maritime Street and Chairman at the IAPH Data Collaboration Committee, and with representatives from the International Taskforce Port Call Optimisation, the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), the International Port Community Systems Association (IPCSA), and the Terminal Industry Committee (TIC) 4.0.

The event saw its highest-ever number of visitors, translating into what has been described by exhibitors and visitors alike as the best-ever staging of TOC Europe in its 40-year history.

With a three-day content programme underpinned by almost 200 exhibitors in  Rotterdam’s Ahoy venue. Paul Holloway, Event Director of TOC Worldwide thanked the event’s stakeholders – speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and visitors – for the success of TOC Europe 2022: “It’s been incredibly satisfying to see and hear so much business being done in-person in the halls across all three days, after the challenging times we all endured during the pandemic. The first TOC Europe since 2019 demonstrated how much we have missed human interaction, and how far the industry has moved forward in the past couple of years, particularly around the topics of digitisation and sustainability.”

The pandemic saw the maritime and shipping sector grow in size, complexity and sophistication, and TOC Europe 2022 has – once again – provided the platform for the industry to meet, share knowledge and experience, and discuss how supply chain challenges have been met and overcome. Considerable focus was placed on the quest to reach carbon-neutral operations, how autonomous solutions can help optimise container movements and increase safety, and how cybersecurity and standardisation are increasingly critical in an ever-digitalised industry.

Looking ahead,  TOC Europe 2023 will be hosted in Rotterdam on 13^th to 15^th June 2023.

Before that, TOC Worldwide’s global portfolio is also back in business with TOC Americas taking place in Lima, Peru on 18^th to 20^th October 2022, followed by TOC Asia in Singapore on 29^th & 30^th November 2022, and the exciting new project, TOC Africa, in partnership Tanger Med Port Authority, in Tangier on 7^th & 8^th March 2023.