The Knowledge to Decide

By 2018 there will be fewer container trucks plying Norwegian roads, as Norwegian shipping company Yara is planning to launch unmanned ships to transport cargo between the countries biggest ports. The first such vessel – Yara Brikeland – is set to launch in 2019 and will be initially manned. By 2020, it will run autonomously, resulting in around 40,000 trucks being taken off the roads. Will unmanned ships shake up the maritime industry? https://www.spireresearch.com/newsroom/spirethoughts/self-driven-ships-make-a-wave/

Halal food is estimated to be a USD415 billion global market. Leon Perera, CEO of Spire Research and Consulting shared his views with news portal Salaam Gateway on the factors that will continue to drive this growth in 2017. The global market for halal-certified food in 2015 was estimated at USD415 billion in the State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2016/17 by Thomson Reuters and Dinar Standard. There is a growing demand for Shariah-compliant food products across the entire value chain, including storage and transportation. Perera remarked that this being driven by a growing Muslim middle class, rising Muslim tourism and aggressive Halal food export promotion programs by some countries. Perera added that Spire was seeing a trend of government agencies seeking to promote tourism and the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) sector from Muslim majority countries by stimulating their domestic Halal food-service sector. https://www.spireres

With 100 days in power for Joko Widodo – the newly elected President of Indonesia – what does the business community have to say about his leadership? Jeffrey Bahar, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Spire Research and Consulting, shared his insights on Bloomberg Businessweek Indonesia. Indonesia – the world’s fourth most populous country – held its latest direct Presidential elections on 20th October 2014. Elected President Joko Widodo – popularly known as Jokowi – completed his first 100 days this January. Most in the business community have been all praises for the government’s performance so far. It is difficult to evaluate a government’s performance based on its first 100 days in power but Bahar opined that Jokowi’s government has taken initiatives to improve certain industries directly, especially fisheries and marine. The new government’s current focus lies on fixing transportation and revamping the climate for investment issues using one door licensing. It remains

The transportation of human organs – especially a donor’s heart – is usually done by packing it in ice inside a cooler box and getting it to the hospital as quickly as possible. Transporters have to race against time. The heart is only viable and capable of being transplanted between 4 and 6 hours after death. But a lot can go wrong during such journeys – traffic jams, bad weather or mechanical difficulties can cause delays. In addition, a heart can be damaged if it is warmed up at the end of surgery; meaning it cannot be “tested” until the transplant operation is complete. The introduction of a new heart-preservation system is set to change all that. Manufactured by Transmedics Inc. in Massachusetts, it is specifically designed to pump oxygenated donor blood and keep the heart in “a warm, beating and functioning physiological state outside of the body”. Moreover, the heart can be monitored to keep beating for up to 12 hours. Should trials of this new system be successf