This year's end grants us with a good opportunity to summarize the entire second decade of the 21st century, hence provide us with the answer whether it was favourable to the European shipbuilding industry in general and to the Baltic Sea region in particular. No, it was not.
One thing shared by all humans and animals is the natural requirement to use the privy, and yet our sensitivities and embarrassment stop us from having conversations about what really goes on in the smallest room (one notable exception, of course, must be the Japanese for whom the lavatory is not only a technical marvel but a luxury experience and source of great national pride!).
The passing year has been an unprecedented period of challenge for everyone in learning how to live, work and create a 'new normal' under the dark clouds of the coronavirus pandemic.
Issues and challenges surrounding the development of ports belonging to the TEN-T Comprehensive Network have long been one of the key areas of the Baltic Ports Organization's (BPO) agenda.
As we all know, 2020 has been an exceptional year. For all the negatives that the year has resulted in, it has also demonstrated how essential the port and shipping sectors are to global commerce as well as their resilience in the face of numerous challenges.
The shipping industry has repeatedly been accused of being a laggard, a business that would happily sail on heavy fuel oil till kingdom come, only investing in technologies that are needed to keep its blissfully analogous fleet afloat.
The three-year ongoing IHATEC-funded project Port Energy Management Dashboard - dashPORT strives to enable port companies and terminal operators to achieve cost savings through a holistic energy-management of both the entire port and all parties that operate within.
Port Lockroy, a natural-harbour bay located on the northwestern shore of the Wiencke Island in the Palmer Archipelago in front of the Antarctic Peninsula, is home to the world's most southerly operational post office (700 km 'under' Argentina and Chile) - usually manned by four-five people, plus a few thousand gentoo penguins.
