How does port automation work?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In October 2024, dockworkers in the US went on strike for three days.
Members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) walked out at 14 major ports along the east and Gulf coasts, halting container traffic from Maine to Texas.
An tentative agreement was made over wages, and they've just returned to the bargaining table to negotiate "all other outstanding issues".
This includes plans to introduce automation to the ports.
In the first of two programmes looking at the future of ports, we head to the Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where the port has been using automation since the 1990s - and to Cape Town in South Africa which is looking for solutions to its efficiency issues.
Presented and produced by Matthew Kenyon, with additional reporting from Mohammed Allie.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]
(Picture: Shipping containers are transported by automated guided vehicles (AGV) beside gantry cranes on the dockside at the Delta Terminal at the Port of Rotterdam in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're with Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Matthew Kenyon. |
| 0:08.6 | When dock workers on the east coast of the United States went on strike in October 2024, |
| 0:18.5 | it wasn't just pay that the unions were fighting for. |
| 0:21.6 | I think we do a better job than the robots. |
| 0:23.8 | And down the road, robots, how will anybody work? |
| 0:27.2 | The whole world will be robots and who's going to pay the taxes? |
| 0:30.3 | Continuing technological developments in US terminals, automation, they say will cost jobs. |
| 0:36.5 | So today on Business Daily, we're going to find out what |
| 0:39.6 | those developments look like away from the US. I'm in the Netherlands finding out how things have |
| 0:45.8 | developed at Europe's biggest port. Full automated terminals doesn't exist. Even what they call |
| 0:52.0 | the full automated terminals in Rotterdam, with Marflict 2, |
| 0:55.1 | they still have 600 people working there. And my colleague Mohammed Ali is in South Africa, |
| 1:00.7 | where they're just setting out down the road to automation. The RTGs and the cranes will |
| 1:05.4 | arrive next year, and we should start seeing a leap in performance when you put in new equipment. |
| 1:10.9 | What does port automation actually look like, and what does it mean for trade and for workers? |
| 1:16.9 | That's all coming up in today's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:25.0 | I'm standing on land which has been reclaimed from the sea, specifically so that it can be used for ever-growing trade. |
| 1:33.3 | This is the Dutch port of Rotterdam, the largest in Europe, and behind me the mouth of the river Mars, which sees tens of thousands of ship movements every year carrying hundreds of millions of |
| 1:46.4 | tons of cargo for distribution across the continent. Facing me, the place where many of those ships |
| 1:53.9 | unload, some of the most advanced container terminals on earth. There are automated cranes |
| 2:00.6 | shuttling back and forth from ship to shore, |
| 2:03.6 | battery-powered autonomous vehicles carrying the containers, |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in -36 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.