Lessons in data-sharing from Europe’s largest port

Posted: June 16, 2026

At Europe’s largest port, the Port of Rotterdam, around 3,000 companies send and share data through a logistics network to coordinate moving over 428 million tonnes of goods through the port each year. The network includes freight forwarders, customs houses, shipping lines, trucking, rail, and inland waterway operators, all working together to keep business running. It’s one example of a digital ecosystem that helps keep operations moving seamlessly while also working towards shared goals, such as reaching sustainability targets.

Digital ecosystems involve collaboration between interdependent organizations and stakeholders using a shared digital infrastructure. The industrial sector is leading the way in this kind of collaboration: According to the Industrial Intelligence Report—published last month by IMD and AVEVA—76% of industrial companies say that they are actively or very actively engaging in digital ecosystems compared to 58% of non-industrial companies. And the benefits are big: 83% of organizations reported moderate or significant improvement in their resilience to disruptions. A further 3% described it as “game-changing.”

For industrial organizations, resilient operations are critical for success: it means the ability to adapt and bounce back when geopolitical situations compromise shipping or climate change causes unexpected weather events. But these digital backbones don’t just require good data. Openness to sharing it is just as vital.

Building good digital ecosystems  

For the businesses that successfully embrace digital ecosystems, the benefits are huge. The Port of Rotterdam processes more than 27,000 ocean-going vessels every year. Its digital ecosystem, Portbase, handles all the logistics data flows across the port community, integrating both government-mandated regulatory reporting as well as voluntary commercial data exchange.

Portbase enables thousands of people to work together to move freight around. Companies from a variety of sectors exchange information through the Portbase network, sharing import or export documents or vessel arrival and departure notifications. The not-for-profit network says that the system helps to lower scheduling costs, improve planning, and reduce errors. Digitizing customs processes, for example, reduced customs processing time by 30%. Portbase also reports that its services enable CO₂ savings, potentially reducing CO2 emissions by approximately 249,000 tonnes in 2024.

Tamires Beltrão, Head of Data Insights for Port Performance at the Port of Rotterdam, told Port Technology International a bit more about how Rotterdam uses and scales its digital tools. Because a port has so many players and systems, she explained that they found digital tools work best when they are embedded directly into core operational processes. Beltrão shared how services such as digital pre-notifications, cargo information, and hinterland coordination ensure that everyone receives the same up-to-date information, translating data “into practical, shared digital services rather than abstract analyses” and improving predictability.

Beltrão shared an example of a route planning pilot that uses predictive data on vessel movement, water depth, weather, and traffic density to identify potential bottlenecks earlier and support traffic flow management. “The emphasis is on actionable decision support embedded in daily operations,” she highlighted.

But these kinds of transformational connected ecosystems are not yet widespread. The Industrial Intelligence Report found that in practice, organizations mostly use digital ecosystems to improve what they already do, prioritizing customer experience, commercialization speed, and ecosystem-wide automation. The research discovered that 91% lack joint cross-organization data governance, demonstrating that the operational foundations lag behind intention.

What prevents data sharing in digital ecosystems?  

So what are the barriers? As businesses face the challenge of keeping their existing operations running, they can struggle to build towards organizational transformation. The Industrial Intelligence Report found that concerns around data were one of the barriers to successful digital ecosystems.

While 74% of organizations rated digital ecosystems as a high or top strategic priority, only 27% said that they share data substantially or extensively with ecosystem partners. The report showed that the more data that organizations shared, the more reported value they got from their ecosystem. But as Professor Michael Wade, part of the report’s research team, put it “…at the same time, paradoxically, we saw quite a large reluctance to share data.”

Tamires Beltrão at the Port of Rotterdam highlighted this too. She explained that even when a technical solution matures relatively early, reaching near-full adoption among users proved to be a long process. “Governance, stakeholder alignment and long-term ownership have become as important as the technology itself,” she told Port Technology International. “Effective collaboration is built around shared operational challenges rather than shared platforms alone.”

Beltrão explained that while the digital infrastructure is important to enable data exchange, “experience clearly shows that successful collaboration depends primarily on trust, clear governance and transparency around data ownership and use. When these conditions are in place, data sharing leads directly to better information, improved planning quality and more reliable coordination across the port ecosystem.”

Issues including privacy, misuse, data quality, and competitive risk can limit data sharing. Only 9% of organizations said they had achieved joint cross-organization data governance, with a further 35% achieving coordinated governance with key partners, but these organizations reported better average ecosystem value than those without.

Strong governance frameworks can increase data sharing. A 2025 paper evaluated a healthcare organization with very informal data sharing processes that introduced a structured governance system, discovering that standardized processes led to significant improvement in data accessibility, more transparency in decision-making, and better data tracking.

The Industrial Intelligence report is clear: to gain the most value from digital ecosystems, organizations need to lead with data openness. To do that, they must build organized, high-quality data and ensure governance structures are in place. The resilience will follow.