The Daily View: Resilience pays off
SHIPOWNERS tend to be optimists, often to a pathological degree.
Given the risk list of potential physical, political, legal and market-based pitfalls that routinely scupper their best efforts, an evolutionary disposition to look on the bright side of life is an essential psychological entry requirement into the market.
So, when they routinely gather for the international roadshow of industry events, it can often feel like a group therapy session as they talk through their extensive anxieties and the defence mechanism they have erected to deal with their ultimate lack of agency.
Geopolitics is in the driving seat, we are told. Sanctions are making the shadow fleet darker. A fragmenting global order is reshaping trade before our very eyes, and the shipping industry has to respond and navigate complexity and risk it is too often ill-equipped to understand or mitigate.
The business of shipping is more complex and riskier than ever before and that optimism is being tested.
The world is going to hell, sighed one owner on the sidelines of London International Shipping Week, before conceding that business was actually very good right now.
And here lies the inherent complexity of shipping’s psychological issues.
If you move beyond the mainstream headlines of tariff turmoil, financial perma-crisis and geopolitical turbulence, shipping continues to be remarkably resilient.
The often overlooked way in which a relatively small number of individuals and companies annually carry the 1.5 tonnes of global trade for every person on the planet reveals an industry that is adapting, and successfully so.
Once we have navigated the turbulence this year the projections suggest shipping will have moved 12.7bn tonnes — roughly the same as last year.
Yes, US imports are down. But not by as much as you may think given the trade barriers being erected.
And yes, the US may be taking in less from China, but not significantly less. Besides, China is happily ramping up exports elsewhere.
Intra-Asia traffic is booming as supply chains adapt and evolve around the new world order of shifting trade lanes.
Last week the Clarksea index, a composite view of earnings from shipping, was at its highest point for two years. It is up to $29,500 a day for the average ship on an Opex of less than $10,000 a day.
So, when the industry gathers for events like London Shipping Week, there will be a long list of concerns.
It is natural for the group therapy to focus on the big themes that will determine the next decade of trading fortunes. Will it be more globalisation, deglobalisation, reshoring, friend-shoring, nearshoring? Is trade bifurcating or just dividing itself down geopolitical lines.
The reality is we are likely looking at a bit of everything and more complexity into the bargain.
But these disruptions and evolving trends are not new. If we look beyond the noise of headlines and objectively examine how shipping has dealt with this upheaval so far, we see that over the past four to five years, shipping has economically benefited from the disruption.
Shipping has been resilient and it will continue to be paid for that resilience, as long as it can sustain its inherent adaptability.
Stay positive out there this week!
Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List
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