Watching a truck pick up a container at London Gateway, a port 30 miles east of the UK capital on the Thames Estuary, it is easy to think the future has already arrived.

The driver parks his vehicle by the container stack, leaves the cab for a small shelter and presses a button. Cranes then move into action: they locate the relevant container, lift it from the stack and deposit it smoothly on the truck’s trailer — all without human intervention.

Yet the shipping and port industries are already planning new steps to make their role in delivering goods to consumers across the globe run even more efficiently over the coming decades. Tech is not the only disruption afoot: changes in global labour costs could also challenge the traditional shipping model.