Lloyd's List: The Shipping Podcast

A few hours after the containership Dali (IMO: 9697428) destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, there were media reports suggesting investigators would look into ‘bad bunkers’ as a potential cause of the accident. The National Transportation Safety Board ruled out that possibility after its initial investigation. But this incident alone gives us a good idea about the perception of the...

In a market where unpredictability has become predictably common, the whole concept of accurate earnings guidance from the lines fell overboard several quarterly reports ago. Forecasts are couched in ever more provisional language as volatility and black swans continue to demand near constant expectation management amid yo-yoing sentiment. While US retailers were baulking at the return of $10,000...

THE prospect of a dominant Trump presidency is significantly more like than it was only a week ago. But what does that mean for shipping? Will the anticipated “Trump trade” really result in more inflation, higher interest rates and sweeping tariffs? Will the inevitable bonfire of Biden’s environmental rules put the brakes on shipping’s already hesitant energy transition? And what about the all imp...

The explosion of sanctions have demanded a compliance sea change from the marine insurance sector. But despite the rapid pace of investment to keep up, P&I Clubs have found themselves struggling to enforce an increasingly unenforceable regime. The flawed nature of the oil price cap regime is hardly news. But while the rest of the industry get to criticise from the sidelines it is the P&I Clubs who...

The threat posed by Houthi missiles and uncrewed surface vessels sits at the lower end of the risk spectrum for shipping. Things could be worse. A lot worse. That was the rather worrying assessment this week from the latest in a series of Geopolitical risk webinars we’ve been running here at Lloyd’s List and for this week’s podcast we are bringing you a few highlights from the discussion. The Red...

As unpalatable as it may be to say out loud, global turmoil is pretty good for business. Shipping CEOs are as happy as shipping CEOs generally get to be.[Sidebar#LL1149672] They are after all a pretty philosophical bunch at heart and they understand that all this has been seen before and will be seen again. They know that unexpected good fortune tends to come with a flipside. What comes up must co...

When we talk about green shipping, are we always talking about actions that have a net benefit in terms of reduction of greenhouse gases? Are the commercial choices we make today about reducing absolute emissions, or just the most pragmatic financial options on the table? And are the regulations we are negotiating genuinely addressing the problem of climate change, or just part of a wider exercise...

There is a growing body of opinion across shipping that is routinely referring to nuclear, alongside carbon capture technology, as the only real options on the table that will allow shipping to fully decarbonise by 2050. Has the previously fringe option of nuclear powered ships now become sufficiently mainstream for the industry to genuinely consider leapfrogging ammonia and hydrogen as a more pra...

Pragmatism seems to be the new buzzword sweeping through the shipping executive lexicon. What that means though requires a bit of decoding. Those of you who have been schlepping round the conference circuit at Posidonia in Athens this week will have no doubt noticed that it comes up quite a lot when talking about decisions that have not been made. A lot has happened in the past few years, we need...

This episode of the Lloyd's List Podcast was brought to you by Wirana - visit https://www.wirana.com/ for more information Shipowners are not having to woo bankers right now. They don’t need to. If anything it’s the bankers’ turn to buy the drinks at Posidonia this year and start talking up ways to deploy capital, because shipowners are paying down loans while they can and bank loan deal flows hav...

This episode of the Lloyd’s List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd’s Register — visit www.lr.org/en for more information. THE US refrained from imposing new sanctions on Iran’s shipping sector for most of last year and was said to be lax in its enforcement of existing sanctions as it was eyeing a prisoner exchange deal with Tehran that took place over the summer. That appears to have changed aft...

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information. “You have to be a cold bitch or an easy lay”. Those words of advice were given nearly 50 years ago by the boss of a London-based shipping company to a young woman starting out her maritime career. That young woman went on to become one of the three founders of Women’...

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information. BATTING centres are an iconic part of Japan's baseball-loving culture and found everywhere in the country as entertainment facilities. For Takaya Soga, the president and chief executive of NYK Line, the past year has felt like being in one of these venues every day,...

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information. The dry cargo market had a strong start to the year as more bulk carriers rerouted away from the Suez Canal, port congestion in China increased and higher than expected Brazilian iron ore exports all pushed up tonne-mile demand. And of course the lowest level of bulk...

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information. The Container lines have begun reporting their first-quarter results, and there are strong improvements on the previous quarter. But that ground has been gained on the back of disruptions to sailings through the Red Sea, which has soaked up capacity and forced rates...

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information. Geopolitical disruptions, wars, sanctions, OPEC+ production cuts and even the weather have all added tonne-mile demand at a point when fleet growth is at a record low. We are living through something of a golden age of tankers right now and certainly nobody is expect...

This podcast is brought to you in association with LISCR, the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry PORT state control (PSC) has reduced accidents and improved safety on board ships, but there is a lot of room for improvement in how PSC inspections are carried out and their outcomes reported, believes Alfonso Castillero, CEO of the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry (L...

In this pivotal year of global elections where the power blocs are squaring up to each other over trade, macroeconomic circumstance has thrust shipping into the limelight. Shipping has a window of opportunity to insert itself at the heart of the big political discussions by reminding politicians of the central role that national fleets and maritime sectors play in keeping economies and trade afloa...

Shipping is getting increasingly more complex and more expensive. On balance, that could be a good thing in that it forces the hand of an industry that has been too cheap for too long and the direction of regulatory travel now at least favours the progressives over the laggards. But we don’t know the detail. We don’t know what fuel availability or costs looks like. We don’t know the detail of what...

LAST July Ukraine’s deep sea maritime trade dried up with the collapse of the Black Sea Initiative. Within days Ukraine put forward a proposal to the UN detailing a route that would see ships sailing through Romanian waters to reach the greater Odesa ports. In August Ukraine announced the opening of a “humanitarian” corridor, pitching the route as a way to evacuate stranded ships. The initial depa...

On International Women’s Day, Stephanie Zank tells Lloyd’s List her story about being a trailblazer in the world of shipping As a girl growing up in Australian in the 1980s Stephanie Zank hated office jobs and loved taking things apart and putting them back together. When she first stepped on board a ship, she knew that this was the career she wanted. But her story isn’t one that we’re normally be...

TUESDAY this week marked P&I renewal day. That’s the name given to the annual hard deadline for the 90% of the world fleet by tonnage entered with International Group P&I clubs to renew their liability insurance for the following year. Historically, the date was considered the first on which Baltic ports were sufficiently ice free to be navigable. That looks rather quaint in these days of global w...

THE shipping industry has a problem that it doesn’t like to talk about. A dark secret. Safety standards, by and large, have been steadily improving over recent decades. Ship casualties and incidents reached an all-time low, in spite of a global pandemic and a steady tightening of regulatory standards have raised the bar across the board. But there is a significant and growing fleet of ships to whi...

Why has the marine insurance industry forgotten about Cynthia Mockett? That is the question at the heart of this week’s edition of the Lloyd’s List Podcast. The widow of a UK marine surveyor and consultant murdered in Yemen 13 years ago in one of the biggest marine insurance frauds in Lloyd’s of London history is still fighting for compensation, as well as payment for the work that led to his deat...

Between Black Sea disruption and two key canals choking under the pressure of climate and war, a triple whammy of blocked arteries threatens world trade. The impacts on the wider global economy could be profound. So what happened to all that talk of supply chain resilience? We have drafted in a couple experts this week to help me make sense of it all: Ryan Petersen, the founder and CEO of digital...