Lloyd's List: The Shipping Podcast

In this week’s podcast we reveal the full story of the Moldovan-flag bulk carrier, The Rhosus, which in 2013 arrived in Lebanon carrying 2,750 ammonium nitrate. The story of a botched loading, crew abandonment that followed left a tomb bomb inside the heart of Beirut and the Rhosus rusting under the breakwater of the port. We explore what happened and ask whether the devastating explosion will be...

Nobu Su, the former billionaire shipowner jailed in London over a long-running dispute about money owed in failed freight futures deals, told Lloyd’s List he has filed for personal insolvency and wants to leave the UK. Three months after his early release from HM Prison Pentonville, where he was serving a 21-month civil sentence related to contempt of court, Mr Su explained he was still determined...

Beacon, the Jeff Bezos backed digital freight disrupter led by ex-Uber and Amazon execs has all the hallmarks of another AI-fueled flight of fancy, promising to revolutionise the analogue inefficiencies of our archaic maritime logistics sector. But as Beacon’s CEO Fraser Robinson reveals in this week’s podcast, he’s not here foretell the death of freight forwarding - far from it – he thinks the se...

Governments have this week pledged to speed up efforts to get hundreds of thousands of stranded merchant sailors home, but this comes after months of similar rhetoric and limited action. So can we expect things to change? International Maritime Organization secretary general Kitack lim – our guest on this week’s podcast – says yes. We are, he argues, in a wartime situation with the pandemic. Gover...

When Şadan Kaptanoğlu was elected President of BIMCO – the world’s largest shipping association – back in May 2019, she knew that the tectonic shifts in shipping would mean a busy agenda. A year into her tenure grappling with shipping’s response to the environment, security and digitalization, she now has the added burden of how to lead through a global pandemic that’s wiped over a billion tonnes...

Our podcast guest this week is a return guest, Emanuele Grimaldi, one of the co-owners of Italy’s Grimaldi Group, which operates a significant fleet of car carriers and roro ferries. As he put it in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal – “We are waiting for the World to restart” – a sentiment no doubt shared by many of his peers. In this week’s interview we talk about his expectations f...

Euronav chief executive Hugo De Stoop joins the podcast this week to talk us through his experience of the continuing bureaucratic logjam that has stranded tens of thousands of seafarers at sea and is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis. Despite unified industry intervention and even some divine intervention from the Pope this week supporting seafarers, nothing seems to be able to get the problems...

We are talking ship recycling on the podcast this week. Specifically we’re looking at how we drive positive change in ship recycling and move this conversation on beyond the finger pointing politics that has dominated the scrapping debate in shipping for many years. It’s an extended special edition this week because we needed a panel of experts to get to the heart of the matter. Talking to Lloyd’s...

Times are tough across the industry right now, but there is a silver linings playbook for those prepared to look beyond the obvious and immediate crises in front of us and embrace a collaborative future with new eyes. That’s the view of our guest this week - DNVGL’s chief executive of maritime Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen, who believes that we are headed into a maritime renaissance. Things that we have tra...

It’s a special edition of the Lloyd’s List Podcast this week, featuring an extended debate on shipping’s decarbonization prospects taking in everything from state support, future fuel options fake zeros and the overwhelming need for clarity and standard definitions when it comes to ambitions Debating shipping’s decarbonization pathways on this week’s podcast: Peter Boyd from Yale University, Matth...

The Trump administration released long-awaited global industry guidance last week that detailed best practices to detect deceptive shipping. What is not being said is almost as important as what is, but the takeaway here is that the international maritime industry will remain in the crosshairs of US sanctions enforcement no matter who wins the presidential election in November. On the podcast this...

Shipping’s new normal of remote working may turn out to be more efficient than the air-mile eating customs of old. Could coronavirus spark a renaissance in shipping, turbo charging digital developments and cultivating collaboration and data standardization along the way? This week the podcast focuses on maritime innovation and entrepreneurship, featuring insights from Roger Holm, president of Wart...

The shipping industry’s 12-step plan to facilitate crew change was released this week and is expected to expedite a more effective government response to the crew change crisis that has seen thousands of seafarers stuck at sea for months. But it also highlights that the industry is bracing for a long period of disruption than many had been hoping for. It’s a wartime situation, says Columbia Shipma...

This week’s podcast homes in on the container market and the storm that awaits at the hands of the coronavirus pandemic. The Lloyd’s List box team convene to assess which of the major carriers are best and worst prepared for the storm that awaits, as a precursor to this month’s Lloyd’s List magazine. Joining the podcast this week too is Sea-Intelligence’s Lars Jensen, who looks even further forwar...

We should have been in Singapore this week, setting the agenda for digitalization and decarbonization. But in the absence of a Singapore Maritime Week this year we’ve drafted in guests from the heart of Maritime’s Lion City to offer up a view of how the sector is coping with the coronavirus challenges, whether we can expect the current disruption to catalyse innovation and why we should expect mor...

The doom-laden forecasts have been coming thick and fast this week warning of the steepest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a lost decade of growth in Latin America and a shrinking Chinese economy for the first time since 1992. To help put these figures into context and explain what the coronavirus economic fallout means for trade demand we have this week drafted in Tom Rogers, he...

With shipping companies continuing to postpone crew exchange and extend employment contracts as the only way of overcoming the coronavirus travel and quarantine restrictions, the industry has a ticking time bomb on its hands. Make no mistake - fatigue among seafarers will inevitably result in more accidents at sea. This is a safety issue and it’s a mental health issue. Several voices join the podc...

West African pirates clearly didn’t get the memo on social distancing. Undeterred by the global coronavirus pandemic, piracy is still rife and insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea in particular continues to blight the lives of seafarers working in the region. As the industry seeks to strength security measures with the latest publication of ‘Best Management Practice’ focused on the Gulf of Guinea hot-...

However horrific the disruption looks right now at a consumer level, we have to believe that Coronavirus is not going to structurally change the shipping markets. Can we hope for a V shaped recovery, or should we brace for a misshapen U? God forbid we even consider the prospect of an L shaped non-recovery. Joining Lloyd’s List Editor Richard Meade this week to discuss the shape of things to come i...

The coronavirus pandemic has left seafarers around the world in a precarious position, but as the focus shifts to European government responses the industry is pulling together to ensure that shipping, and seafarers, can keep world trade afloat. This week’s edition discusses concerns facing crew amid the Covid-19 restrictions and features maritime trade union Nautilus’ general secretary Mark Dicki...

In this special episode of the Lloyd’s List Shipping Podcast, Editor Richard Meade discusses the forthcoming Lloyd’s List Awards series, answering many of the questions that come up as companies and individuals are preparing their submissions, and setting listeners on the path to success with some sound advice.

Panic buying seems to be the trend of the moment, whether you’re stockpiling bathroom essentials amid coronavirus concerns, or making a grab for tanker tonnage amid an increasingly volatile oil price war – it’s all the same sentiment spooking markets. This week’s Podcast looks behind the inflated earnings of VLCCs and then examines the impact of a plummeting oil price on marine fuel spread strateg...

The impact of coronavirus continues to ripple through the shipping industry and the wider global supply chain, so to help make sense of the increasingly complex picture we have once again sought a diverse range of industry insight for this week’s edition. Guy Platen, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, discusses the latest advice being issued to the industry after consultat...

With Qatar’s National Vision 2030 clearly in mind, this Maritime and Logistics Summit looked beyond liquefied natural gas to a diversified maritime cluster. The new Hamad port with its next-generation terminals and free zone form the foundation of a maritime cluster that draws on best practice elsewhere. This Summit heard from speakers from major Qatar and foreign companies and associations. It’s...

We have a climate emergency, we can’t wait for the IMO, says Jutta Paulus, the European Parliament’s maritime emissions rapporteur. In this week’s Podcast Anastassios Adamopoulos sits down with the controversial MEP in Brussels to discuss her proposal that would effectively force ships to operate under an emissions cap and trade system, increase their carbon intensity performance and contribute to...