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The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) discussed projects that it will advance in the future, which are enhancements in the intra-Asia shuttle shipping services and the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) container terminals, at the recent meeting of its Strategic International Container Port Policy Promotion Committee.
On the trunk route between Japan and Europe, two shipping services are operated a week now. The meeting agreed to maintain or enhance them. Meanwhile, Japan hosts a total of four intra-Asia services every week, all of which call Singapore (the Straits). The committee intends to upgrade the network, which serves Japan 0.5 times a day, to weekly or even more frequently, hoping that it would be connected with the large number of services between Singapore and Europe. To handle shipments to and from North America, it will work to increase the number of direct services between Japan and the region to reinforce the function of ports in Japan as an eastern gateway in Asia. To this end, the committee confirmed that it will have the government of Japan help port operators at the Keihin and Hanshin ports attract shipments from Southeast Asia, which are increasing in terms of volume.
The committee agreed to develop a system under which highly productive container terminals will be operated. To this end, it will combine the world’s best cargo loading and unloading services that Japanese experts provide with the Internet of things (IoT), AI and automation—e.g., automated container carriage with automated guided vehicles (AGVs), container transport with trucks run in orderly rows and the remote and automated operation of rubber tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) and rail mounted gantry cranes (RMGs).
The committee also decided to make a package of efforts that include utilizing AI terminals and optimizing entire supply chains.
