The IUMI Annual Conference that was due to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in September 2021, was once again held online because of the continuing Covid travel restrictions. However, this did not stop the event being a huge success with over 500 delegates in attendance, although we would have much preferred to meet face to face with our colleagues.

The Seoul Organising Committee did an exceptional job of hosting this year’s event, with 10 workshops held twice every day over two weeks, from 2 to 15 September 2021. Thank you very much for making this year’s event such a success. The event kicked off with three excellent keynote addresses from Jeong-Goo Kang, Director of Marine Environment Policy, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, KOR-Sejong; In-Hyeon Kim, Director of Maritime Law Center, Korea University, KOR-Seoul; and Do-Hyeong Lim, CEO of Avikus, Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, KOR-Seoul.  

This year the conference theme was ‘Pathways to a sustainable, resilient and innovative future’ and the programme was full of interesting and topical presentations with experts from across the world speaking. It was encouraging to see our industry embrace environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues with all workshops having some focus on these.

There were many highlights from the conference but a few to mention included the President’s workshop that looked at pathways to the decarbonisation of the transport industry; the Facts & Figures workshop, a crowd pleaser every year, where the committee presented the global marine insurance figures and report; there were also presentations on vaccine logistics, container collapse, cargo claims due to unsuitable packaging and alternative fuels. The presentations are available to members to download here.

Thank you once again to the Seoul Organising Committee for making this year’s event such a success. One thing that IUMI always finds is how humbling and inspiring it is when we see so many professionals giving up their time to participate in our annual conference and organisation. We thank each one of you and you truly are the soul (or Seoul?) of IUMI. We look forward to welcoming you next year to a hopefully in-person annual conference in Chicago, USA.