As CTAC Europe marks its 10th edition, the focus is firmly on how terminals are translating automation into real operational value. In this series, we speak with the voices you will hear on stage at CTAC Europe 2026, sharing their perspectives on the technologies, challenges, and opportunities shaping terminal operations.
Today, we sit down with Dr Oscar Pernia, Founder and Technical Lead of NextPort.AI. Oscar participates as advisor and thought leader in several innovation and R&D activities, with a core focus on enabling the introduction of Artificial Intelligence in the Port Industry. During the last 20 years, he has accumulated extensive international experience in container shipping, covering technology solutions across all processes in the ocean supply chain, with a specific focus on ports and terminals and participating in the automation and modernisation of more than 25 container terminals worldwide.
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What are you most looking forward to at CTAC Europe this year?
CTAC has become a meeting point for the industry to discuss progress in automation, but also digitalisation and technologies like AI. I am looking forward to meeting the terminal technology community again at CTAC, to learn not only about the milestones we are achieving collectively, but also to share visions on what comes next and how to make those a reality soon.
There are important topics related to the impact we are creating, such as safety, decarbonisation, the future of work, and of course efficiency and productivity. We need to put these into perspective, and CTAC is a great forum each year in which to do so.
Looking at the agenda this year, I see a clear continuation of these topics and conversations. It is good that, around this conference, we have generated a sense of community with a common purpose in terms of what we want to achieve as an industry that needs to evolve and innovate continuously.
What does good automation look like in a terminal today?
There are three core aspects I would highlight, based on my experience over the last 18 years in this field.
The first is integration with processes, meaning people. This is the fundamental focus when terminal operators introduce automation, together with an associated business case. The organisational aspects can never be underestimated.
The second is system integration, from TOS to ECS, and the growing sophistication of IoT and how that ecosystem is simplifying and streamlining terminal management, including operations and maintenance.
The third, and not least, is data. Automation brings a great deal of information through the recording of operations and maintenance execution, as well as planning records. This is the foundation for optimisation, and we are only at the beginning of applying AI to that.
Across all three of these areas, terminal operators are looking for safety, efficiency and productivity, predictability, decarbonisation, and resiliency. These are the fundamental drivers, but automation requires a serious approach to a number of aspects that are often not highlighted enough upfront. Good automation should come with more repeatable, predictable, and easier implementations.
What are the main challenges when putting new technology into operation?
The terminal automation industry has progressed a great deal across the different waves of technology that we have seen since the 1990s, but the core challenge we still face is that the associated business case of an automated terminal is not delivering the expected results, either in terms of performance or time to value. As an industry, we need to work on this collectively.
Along that path, standardisation and interoperability remain key topics to address. Looking at different projects, it is difficult to compare technologies and implementations in a way that allows us to identify a clear success pattern or best practice, and the perception that each project is reinventing the wheel is still in place. Efforts such as TIC 4.0, with terminal operators moving towards more aligned concepts, architectures, and interfaces, are crucial in helping to mitigate this challenge.
Related to this, digitalisation is still a buzzword without enough practical guidelines, despite becoming an effective prerequisite for automation. Digitalisation establishes, first, discipline in processes and, second, the core data foundation required for different solutions to function properly and, again, to interoperate. There is no single system that can implement all the functions required to automate a terminal, so digitalisation is also key to easing system integration.
Finally, there is change management. Even in greenfield projects, the organisational and people aspects have often been underestimated. The technical effort needs to be accompanied by a strong design of the terminal organisation, including profiles, dependencies, and training across departments such as operations, maintenance, and IT. New competencies, such as optimisation and continuous improvement, also need to be properly resourced.
Which technologies do you think will shape terminals in the next five years?
We need technology to deliver tangible results. Automation technology is already very mature, with AI now pushing boundaries and opening up new paradigms.
Automation itself is now entering a new generation of solutions. With remote quay cranes and autonomous trucks, we see technologies evolving each year in forums such as CTAC. The technology behind these developments, including wireless communication, IoT, and edge computing, is here to stay and will enable a more distributed intelligence across terminal automation.
TOS providers are approaching the next generation of their products with a greater focus on leveraging data from other systems. In parallel, ECS providers are making traditional PLC software smarter and more connectable, not only to support the execution control of equipment movements, but also to advance safety, decarbonisation, and preventive maintenance. How TOS and ECS integration evolves will definitely shape the way terminals operate in the coming years.
Of course, AI will change the whole picture, but we are still at a very early stage, both in enabling the data foundation needed for AI to deliver precise results on a broader level for automation and optimisation, and in moving from an interesting tool to one that can realise its full potential in augmenting humans and machines, creating effective synergy between them.
