The 5th Vancouver Shipping lunch was successfully held on June 19 with more than 35 attendances. Our 3 distinguished speakers presented their topics to cover very diverse subjects.
Mr. Anders Mikkelsen from DNV GL was talking about Smart Shipping. He stated that DNV/ GL is taking a broad view to enable a safer, smarter and greener ship performance. For DNV GL, digitalization is the main vehicle to modernize class and Artificial Intelligence. He presented the picture of Digitalisation – connectivity – remote – autonomy: from vision to reality – towards unmanned ships. 3D printing and enhanced manufacturing will simplify ship’s part changes and drawings etc.
Ms. Brittany Baumann, a Macro Economic Strategist from TD Security Toronto, was coincidentally visiting Vancouver and, it is really our good luck to have her speak. She presented an excellent analysis of the current NAFTA Negotiation, the US/Canada Trade war, US/China Trade war. She detailed the consequences and risks of “what could possibly go wrong?” She predicted that Canadian economy very much reliant on US market, will be hit by Trade War, the Canadian dollars will be bearish in short term for sure.
Finally, we had Mr. Alexander Kurtynin is from PressReader, a Vancouver based technology company that provides access to thousands of global newspapers and magazines on one digital platform. Alexander introduced PressReader and discussed some of the ways that shipping companies could use the platform to engage with their crews & personnel, while also improving crew welfare. It is particularly relevant, as on June 25th the global shipping industry will be celebrating the Day of the Seafarer, with this year’s theme being “Seafarers’ wellbeing.”
This is our last Shipping Lunch before summer time. Hereby, we sincerely thank all attendances’ support during our last events. It is very encouraging to hear from Ms. Kaity Arsoniadis-Stein, VIMC, that our Premier Mr. John Horgan approves VIMC’s next year’s budget. We will resume our shipping lunch after summer time in September.
We were thinking about having a “Pub Night” some time in the summer – if there was enough interest – please drop us a line if you are interested and we can see what numbers we have and whether enough to organize something.
