Shipping's efficiency crisis

Culture, not technology, is the problem

The global shipping industry is systematically squandering opportunities to slash fuel costs and emissions, not because solutions don't exist, but because perverse incentives and fractured organisational cultures make inefficiency the rational choice, according to a hard-hitting new report from the Global Maritime Forum.

Despite the availability of proven optimisation tools and well-understood efficiency levers, most shipping companies are capturing only a fraction of available value, the January 2026 report reveals. The culprit isn't technology, however. It's leadership failures, siloed decision-making, and commercial structures that actively reward wasteful practices like “sail fast then wait”.

Demurrage problem

The report pulls no punches in identifying the core issue: current commercial structures make many inefficient behaviours “entirely rational”. Demurrage charges, buffer-heavy planning, separate profit-and-loss structures, and fragmented key performance indicators all conspire to favour individual certainty over system-wide optimisation.

“If incentives are not aligned, nothing else matters,” one workshop participant bluntly stated, according to the report.

The findings emerged from an interactive operational efficiency workshop hosted by the Global Maritime Forum in Copenhagen in November 2025, where industry participants engaged in a custom voyage simulation game. The exercise exposed how value chain actors routinely act defensively, protect local incentives, and delay decisions, even when system-wide efficiency gains are readily available.

A tale of two rounds

The simulation's results were stark. In the first round, participants mirrored current industry practice: hoarding information, waiting for certainty, and defaulting to “sail fast then wait” strategies. But when incentives were reframed around shared outcomes in round two, behaviour shifted dramatically.

The contrast underscored a critical insight: the barriers to operational efficiency stem from human behaviour and organisational norms far more than from data or digital tools.

The trust deficit

“The most powerful theme running through the workshop was the role of trust, and importantly, its absence,” the report states. Low trust between shipowners and charterers, between ship operators and terminals, and even between internal departments was repeatedly identified as the reason rational efficiency opportunities go untapped.

The report highlights how information sharing is viewed as a commercial risk or loss of leverage, with data routinely withheld between organisations. This directly undermines energy-efficient arrivals that depend on early, reliable information sharing, particularly between ports, terminals, and vessels.

Within companies, the picture is equally fragmented. The report describes how charterers measure success by cost per tonne while operators and claims teams track entirely different profit-and-loss metrics, with conflicting bonus structures leading teams to protect their own performance at the expense of overall efficiency.

The competitive advantage myth

Workshop discussions revealed a significant gap between perceived and actual risks of transparency. During development of the International Maritime Organization's Carbon Intensity Indicator, some actors resisted proposals involving actual cargo mass, fearing exposure of commercially sensitive information.

Yet participants noted that companies participating in the Sea Cargo Charter already publish emissions intensity data incorporating cargo mass annually without any reported competitive consequences. One might even argue, the report suggests, that these companies are more competitive precisely because they measure more than their peers.

The cost of inaction

The stakes are rising sharply. As zero-emission fuels increase voyage costs, efficiency gains will become essential for maintaining competitiveness and meeting regulatory and customer expectations. Operational efficiency represents one of the few levers that can immediately cut fuel use, emissions, and costs creating both savings and confidence companies need as they transition to more expensive alternative fuels.

Three enablers for change

The report identifies three core enablers needed to unlock change at scale:

◼︎ Clear vision and strategic alignment within organisations to ensure efficiency is framed as a strategic priority, supported by KPIs that reflect operational reality rather than aspirational statements disconnected from frontline teams.

◼︎ Cross-departmental collaboration to break down silos, enabling chartering, operations, technical, and sustainability teams to co-own voyages instead of pursuing conflicting objectives.

◼︎ Cross-value-chain collaboration to align cargo owners, shipowners, operators, ports, and terminals around shared expectations, data, and benefits.

A roadmap forward

The report lays out a phased transformation pathway. Short-term actions include establishing clear narratives linking efficiency to fuel savings and emissions reduction, launching targeted cross-functional pilot projects, and adopting shared performance metrics.

Medium-term priorities involve aligning internal KPIs and incentives, scaling pilots into structured improvement programmes, and strengthening value chain collaboration through benefit-sharing and early contractual coordination, with cargo owners driving operational efficiency measures.

Long-term transformation requires embedding efficiency into governance, fleet strategy, and investment decisions. Critically, the report envisions making demurrage “an exception, not a default mechanism” under evolved port call optimization scenarios, with acceleration from emerging regulatory frameworks.

The bottom line

“Operational efficiency in shipping is not a technical challenge; it is a systemic one,” the report concludes. “When strategic alignment, internal collaboration, and cross-value-chain incentives reinforce one another, efficiency becomes a measurable, scalable driver of both commercial performance and decarbonisation.”

The question now is whether industry leaders will act on these insights or continue leaving billions of dollars and countless tons of emissions on the table while waiting for someone else to move first.

The report was authored by Arron Welling, Ross Berridge, and Randall Krantz, with contributions from industry participants including BIMCO, Bunge S.A., Cargill Ocean Transportation, NAPA, NORDEN, Pacific Basin, and the Port of Rotterdam, among others.

PHOTO: Licenced Adobe PhotoStock

Seafarer welfare being monitored