CMA CGM inaugurates a training center with AI and decarbonization as priorities

Called Tangram, this training center was built in the heart of the Ecole nationale supérieure maritime (ENSM) in Marseille around a country house revisited by the architectural firm of Jean-Michel Wilmotte, at the foot of the Calanques national park.

With its glass wall, this center, whose budget has not been specified, is designed as a showcase of the history and ambitions of the container ship specialist which has diversified with logistics and the media and has seen its workforce grow exponentially with nearly 180.000 employees around the world.

Tangram aims to train 3.000 employees in 2024 and 5.000 in 2025 around three so-called “strategic” training courses: climate, AI and “leadership”.

For each of these themes, the group, led by the Saadé family from their headquarters in Marseille, has worked in particular with the Imperial College Business School in London and HEC.

“AI is obvious given the challenges in a fairly traditional, conservative industry... therefore difficult to disrupt,” Angelo-Gabriel Mikael, director of Tangram, explained during a press visit on Tuesday.

As evidenced by the robot dog which circulates on the site and will surprise the visitor. It is already used in warehouses for surveillance patrols.

A logical theme also for the group's CEO, Rodolphe Saadé, who, with Xavier Niel, notably runs "Kyutai", a "non-profit" laboratory dedicated to AI research.

Climate training will aim to “enable learners to become aware of their role and responsibility” in the decarbonization roadmap, according to Angelo-Gabriel Mikael.

Even if, warned Rodolphe Saadé in an interview with Le Monde, "we must be lucid: it will be very difficult" to reach net zero emissions in 2050.

Three Tangram navigation simulators will also be used by students from ENSM, a recruitment pool for the CMA CGM, explained the director of the center without giving more details on the links between the two structures.

After two years of exceptional profits, the group posted a net profit divided by seven in 2023 and expects a difficult year in 2024 in the face of geopolitical tensions and a reversal of the cycle.