IN PROFILE
“We’re in a fundamentally different market these days wherein I believe the cycles are much shorter,” he explains. Across shipping segments ordering is, despite an uptick in the last 12 months, still quite low and prices are, in Aloy’s words, “still aggressive”. All the shipyards that have closed down or reduced production can start up again or increase production quickly, Aloy warns. Should dry bulk pick up aggressively this year, he points out that the yards have a lot of capacity to fill orders, especially as they do not have a lot of work on other vessel types. “So if there is an upturn I think the cycle will be much shorter than we expect and we’ll need to get out sooner than we think,” Aloy says. The only positive for now as he sees it is that financing is either difficult to obtain or expensive. Aloy might be a scion of a family with huge shipping empires such as CMB and tanker giant Euronav, but he is content to keep Ebe small and focused on dry bulk. “We are currently very happy with our position in dry bulk which we built up over the course of 2016 and 2017,” he says. Looking at the tanker sector, his exposure to Euronav tells him that increasingly this is a sector where scale is vital following a series of massive merger and acquisitions in the last couple of years. “Our holding company is one of the major shareholders in Euronav where we are very happy to own shares rather than ships. Tankers are consolidating and there is no room for small players such as ourselves, best to leave it to the big boys,” he says. For Aloy then for the time being the plan is – just like his Sangiovese reds – to keep making subtle, yet fruity plays in the improving dry bulk market. ●
ISSUE ONE 2018
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We felt that in such a high-risk industry it is best to prepare yourself for the worst while hoping for the best
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