Singapore handled a record 41.12 million TEU containers in 2024, and by the 2040s it plans to move 65 million a year through a single facility: Tuas Port, on track to become the world’s largest fully automated container terminal. The port that keeps Singapore’s shelves stocked is, increasingly, run by AI — and the ripple effects reach every retailer’s supply chain.
Driverless vehicles, around the clock
Tuas Port, officially opened in September 2022, runs fleets of automated guided vehicles that move containers 24/7 at up to 25 km/h, tracked by RFID transponders embedded in the ground. Each vehicle runs six to eight hours on a 20-minute automated charge, and the electric fleet cuts emissions by roughly half compared with diesel equipment. A central command centre orchestrates automated operations, remote equipment control, and diagnostics.
AI in the water, not just the yard
Beyond the terminal, an AI- and satellite-powered next-generation vessel traffic management system monitors ship movements in real time, optimises berth allocation, and predicts congestion before it forms. PSA International has described using AI across terminal safety and traffic orchestration at Tuas, with workloads spanning hands-free container handling and congestion hotspot detection in Singapore’s waters.
OptETruck: fixing the empty-truck problem
The most relatable story is on the road. Before optimisation, roughly 35% of trucks left the port empty — burning fuel, wages, and hours. PSA’s OptETruck platform, built with HERE Technologies, uses AI to assign jobs and optimise routes in real time. Around 400 trucks — about a fifth of Singapore’s haulage market — have adopted it, with a projected cut of 10 million kilograms of CO2 a year. That’s a classic AI pattern any business will recognise: find the expensive empty runs in your operation and let software fill them.
Why this matters to retailers
Every stockout and every landed-cost dollar in Singapore retail passes through this system. A faster, more predictable port means tighter lead times and less safety stock — which makes AI demand forecasting on your side of the chain even more valuable, because the upstream variability is shrinking. And Singapore’s ambition here is the same one driving the refreshed Retail Industry Digital Plan: automate the repetitive at national scale, keep humans on judgement.
What smaller businesses can take from this
PSA’s wins are really three transferable moves: measure the waste you’ve normalised (35% empty trips was just “how trucking works” until it wasn’t), optimise scheduling with software instead of intuition, and electrify-and-automate the tasks that run around the clock. The shop-scale equivalents — delivery routing, staff rostering, reorder timing — are exactly what we scope in our SME services. New to the jargon (AGV, digital twin, orchestration)? The glossary keeps it plain.
In this series: AI in Singapore hospitals · Hyundai’s smart factory in Jurong · FairPrice’s AI supermarkets.
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