UP FRONT 01
EDITOR’S LETTER
Speaking to leaders in the industry, as I often do, I have
but reflects the uncertainty felt in the maritime industry
been quite surprised going into 2021 at the level of optimism
about the environmental regulations that operators will
about business conditions for the year. Perhaps it reflects
have to meet in the future. After all, a new ship ordered
a widespread relief at seeing the back of 2020 but there have
today will be expected to trade for at least 20 years – longer
been several comments about how good the underlying
in the specialised tanker trades such as chemicals and
conditions appear to be right now.
LPG – and will therefore need to meet future emissions and
Perhaps it is also a sign of relief as we begin to see companies
efficiency standards that are not clear. While the necessary
issuing their financial results for 2020, which so far have been
technologies are out there, many are not yet at the scale
remarkably good for most players in the dangerous goods supply
that is needed. Nonetheless, progress is being made in
chain. Product is still moving and, with restrictions relating to
several areas, notably the use of ammonia, hydrogen and
the Covid-19 pandemic still in place, operators are in a position
electricity for ship propulsion, as we report in this issue.
of sweating their assets to make sure their customers keep
But there is a suspicion that those executives expressing
supplied. With uncertainty has come stockbuilding, which has
confidence in their optimism about the market for the rest
certainly been good news for bulk liquids terminals but also for
of the years are doing so with their fingers crossed behind
tank container operators, though Stolt-Nielsen’s latest set of
their backs. We are not yet close to beating off the Covid-19
results seem to indicate that the use of tanks for temporary
pandemic, people are still dying in their thousands and
storage is now beginning to ease.
lockdowns and other restrictions are far from over. While
That positive picture is also seen across the shipping industry,
the arrival of vaccines offers a light at the end of the viral
not least in the container sector, where the efforts made over
tunnel, their performance has not been fully proven in the
the course of 2020 by the major lines to reduce capacity have
real world and we do not yet know how they will cope with
led to a position of very tight space and rocketing ocean freight
mutating strains.
rates. That is good for them but less good for shippers and,
The logistics industry adapted remarkably rapidly to the
if the pricing environment continues, it may contribute to the
uncertainties that the pandemic delivered in the second
trend for re-shoring supplies that was spotted in the early
quarter of 2020; they – and the rest of us – have got used
months of the pandemic.
to new ways of working and new ways of communicating.
In the tanker trades, revenues have been supported by tight supply. In chemical tankers, for example, there has been little
It seems to me that what we have learned in 2020 will still be relevant for the rest of this year, if not for longer.
newbuilding activity and few new contracts placed over the past couple of years. This is surprising at a time of firm freight rates
Peter Mackay
WWW.HCBLIVE.COM
