The paper presents key trends and developments in the maritime and ports sector, with emphasis on the European ports sector. These trends are grouped around five main categories, i.e. market, business, technology, socio-economic evolution and environment related, based on a series of workshops and interviews with key industry experts. Their implications to the port labour industry are discussed. The aim is to provide a better and deeper understanding of the resulting changes in the nature of port work, thus fostering the identification of the main requirements for shaping future human resource demand profiles, skills and training needs, and to contribute towards a better trained EU port labour force and consequently to more competitive European ports.