A textual analytics approach to sustainable supply chain dynamics in European maritime logistics

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of 871 European maritime firms, focusing on the spatial distribution of their headquarters, workforce demographics and digital footprint, as measured by LinkedIn follower metrics. To complement the quantitative data, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was employed for text mining analysis on company LinkedIn descriptions, revealing emergent themes in innovation, customer-centric philosophy and global integration. The results point to a strong regional concentration of firms in Great Britain and the Netherlands, reflecting historical marine legacies and robust port infrastructures. Furthermore, the prevalence of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) highlights the industry’s fragmented yet resilient structure, while digital presence remains uneven across firm sizes, with only a minority achieving substantial influence and visibility on social media. To summarize, these insights suggest that maritime logistics holds potential to drive systemic improvements in operational coordination, regional development, and global trade connectivity. Enhancing its integration could support more efficient supply chains, mitigate regional disparities, and bolster the industry’s global competitiveness.