Ports put AI scaling at center of 11th Tangier meeting

Representatives from 10 listed ports gathered in Tangier, Morocco, on 29 and 30 October for the 11th chainPORT Annual Meeting, hosted by Tanger Med. Their stated priority was to move artificial intelligence from pilot projects into practical, secure and scalable port operations.

The participant list comprised Hamburg, Los Angeles, Tanger Med, Antwerp-Bruges, Barcelona, Busan, Gothenburg, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Singapore.

Where did the discussion focus?

Sessions moved from technology trends to practical implementation. Participants exchanged experience on how AI can support decision-making, improve operations and create measurable value. They also considered the growing demands on critical infrastructure operators for efficiency, resilience and security. The agenda connected AI directly to port performance, although the gathering established no common metric for judging results.

Who set out the implementation case?

• Dr Lamiae Azizi of the Polytechnic University UM6P College of Computing outlined the state of AI development and emerging innovation initiatives.
• Seshagiri Rao, APM Terminals' vice president and CIO, showed how data-driven approaches are transforming logistics and industrial operations.
• Charbel Aoun of NVIDIA described the technology foundations required for industrial-scale adoption.
• Mohamed Bachiri, Renault Maroc's managing director, set out how connected manufacturing, logistics and ports can create more integrated and resilient value chains.

No AI product, contract value, implementation budget or deployment timetable appeared in the meeting summary. That omission limits what readers can infer: the presentations established a use-case direction, not a quantified commercial result.

Delegates visited the Tanger Med port complex and Renault's plant, which the gathering identified as Africa's largest car factory. Members also reviewed the outcomes of chainPORT's working groups. The visits put an operating port and an industrial logistics chain in view but produced no before-and-after operating data.

Can AI move beyond pilot appeal?

Jens Meier, CEO of Hamburg Port Authority and chainPORT co-initiator with the Port of Los Angeles, set a deliberately cautious test. "AI must deliver real operational value rather than excitement," he said.

Meier cited what delegates saw at Tanger Med, including advanced nautical applications, as evidence that ports are moving beyond experimentation. He also identified the remaining constraint: proven solutions must scale securely and sustainably. His framing matters because the program named applications without quantifying their contribution to vessel turnaround, cargo handling or operational resilience.

Mehdi Tazi Riffi, Tanger Med's CEO, tied the network's role to implementation rather than experimentation. "AI's full value will come from turning innovation into practical solutions," he said. Tazi Riffi said chainPORT could help leading ports share experience and accelerate deployment of answers to common problems.

What does the meeting mean for freight stakeholders?

For shippers, carriers and forwarders, the commercial case rests on the participants' claim that AI can improve port decisions and operations. That proposition could support more reliable planning around cargo and resources, but the gathering disclosed no TEU volume, tonnage figure, $/FEU rate, capacity percentage, dwell time or crane productivity metric.

It also disclosed no evidence of lower costs, shorter transit times or higher asset utilization.

That evidence gap is not a minor footnote. Without measured throughput, service-quality and return-on-investment outcomes, the event did not demonstrate lower costs or faster port service. A claim of "measurable value" also sets a standard that speakers did not apply publicly: they identified no baseline, target or realized gain.

The international network remains the proposed route to faster adoption. Participants presented collaboration as a way to accelerate innovation while introducing technology responsibly, securely and with a clear operational purpose. For freight operators, the useful test will be whether shared experience produces deployed systems with disclosed results at the 10 represented ports.

What happens next?

The next stage described at the meeting is the scale-up of proven AI solutions, not further experimentation alone. No projects, deadlines or commercial terms for that expansion appeared in the account, so the trajectory remains a shared deployment objective. Secure, sustainable and measurable implementation will determine whether chainPORT's members turn conference consensus into operating gains.