The 9th Annual International Physical Internet Conference (IPIC) was held in Athens, Greece from June 13 to 15. About 1,500 global physical internet researchers, entrepreneurs, and innovators gathered at the event.
Over 50 high-level forums were held over three days. This year's conference was much larger than previous editions. The China Hongqiao Physical Internet Alliance also attended and delivered a speech.
The 9th IPIC, running under the banner "Physical Internet: Expanding the Logistics Scope", aimed to provide an open forum for the industry, innovators, researchers, government officials and citizens to introduce leading edge concepts, technology applications and methodologies for future interconnected logistics.
It was also set up to review state-of-the-art technologies and the latest projects, and to identify critical issues and challenges for future physical internet-induced research, innovation, and implementation. Specifically, the conference focuses on insights related to how to implement the physical internet in different generations and time frames from next year to 2030.
This year's conference was open to all physical internet topics and focused on the physical internet as a suitable approach to the latest breakthroughs.
Physical internet principles and developments contributed to supporting freight transport and logistics decarbonization in an affordable way by bringing further efficiency to logistics and enabling collaboration and sharing at marginal set up costs. They also provide further resilience to global and regional supply chains through the implementation of synchromodal strategies and interconnected logistics multimodal networks.
The participants agreed the physical internet has fully transformed from a concept to reality, and has emerged as a new industry that can be implemented globally through multi-point breakthroughs.
The convening of the Global Physical Internet Conference in 2023, indicated by the size of the conference and the enthusiastic participation of more attendees than expected, suggests the physical internet industry is making strides and assuming ever-more importance.
