Over the worst? We might find out this week

The shipping market has a spring in its step, even as summer draws to a close. There is it seems, confidence that finally, we are emerging into the light and the beginnings of a sustained recovery. In this sense, London International Shipping Week, which will be in full swing by the time this piece is published, will be a useful thermometer with which to take the patient’s temperature.
We might not get a full appraisal and certainly the industry will need to be kept under observation, but there should be plenty of discussion of whether the worst is over and how quickly earnings and operations can get back to normal.
As a participant this week I shall certainly be looking for signs of returning confidence and full recovery but Jonah that I am, I’m not completely convinced we are out of the woods yet.
The problem that shipping has at the moment is equating activity with achievement. If we all just look busy, the feeling goes, we can work our way out of this. And just when you’re least expecting it, you’ll pop your head up and everything will be rosy again. This scenario is very unlikely to take place, at least in the short term.
For one thing, shipyard capacity is still far, far, too high and the very short memories of those who cashed in at the flood are still strong enough to have them believe that there is money to be made by hanging tight and waiting for better times. In one sense this might be true, if some of the ships lashed together as the yard was being built around them really are as short-lived as some people predict.
It would be a good thing if the global fleet was renewed and its average age reduced so significantly that one source of casualty risk is reduced, or even removed. Unfortunately, recent casualties tend to suggest that it is not as simple as that.
Singling out the shipyards seems a little unfair, after all it is the owners that keep on coming back for more. But the fact that some are prepared to continue to cut prices in order to attract business undermines the entire industry and creates the worst possible two-tier market.
Owners are hardly in the best of health either, an observation based on the eagerness with which they are flocking to new sources of finance – now that the banks have decided they will mostly pass – and their willingness to order against analysis of economic recovery which is far from proven.
The change in complexion of the Chinese economy, even given that country’s extraordinary ability to manage its movements up and down is in stark contrast to the rout being effected on the Indian currency (and others) as a result merely of expectations that the US Fed will taper its QE programme. Micro-economic conditions elsewhere remain fragile to say the least. To take one example, London property prices (and hotel room rates) are high but the country’s recovery seems predicated on very doubtful fundamentals.
Analysts have forecast the end of the commodities boom since the start of the year if not longer and the reversal of fortune in Australia’s economy is testament to that. It seems self-evident that an extractive industry is unsustainable in the very long term but when the demand profile changes, the supply side has to adjust. Look at the tanker market and shale gas for further evidence of that.
The major shipping markets remain volatile and treacherous, even despite the summer’s dry bulk upturn and some semblance of order returning to tanker and containership markets. In the first of these, simply look how far out the forward curve has pushed a recovery – with Cal14 Cape levels below spot values last week.
At the same time costs, primarily as a result of regulation and the cost of quality labour continue to remain high. But the situation here is if anything even more confused. Owners have to budget and plan for some regulations that continue to move away from them and others that seem set in stone, despite concerns that they will be difficult to comply with and will put further pressure on the price of operations.
At the same time, owners are engrossed in hot pursuit of energy efficiency initiatives, many of which sound promising but which are in some cases lacking in empirical evidence as to their efficacy.
Elsewhere, security concerns a remain, with new threats emerging, in Libya, Suez and in the eastern Mediterranean to add to those already well known off east and west Africa. These will hopefully be temporary effects – though ironically some degree of disruption can be good for earnings – but no one can image that a long term closure of the Suez Canal for example is in the industry’s best interest.
New frontiers continue to be explored, with the first Chinese transit of the Northern Sea Route recently completed. Even the secretary general of the IMO has made the journey, suggesting that shipping is preparing for this to become part of the business as usual scenario before long.
And yet doesn’t it also seem likely that during his voyage, Mr Sekimizu will have come to the inescapable conclusion that melting summer ice on the NSR should probably go in the ‘cons’ column when weighing the effect in the context of global warming?
Perhaps he will have returned doubly convinced that the industry must tackle the carbon dioxide issue and perhaps more troublingly, the carbon black issue, before too long.
Still, take a look at this week’s LISW programme and it seems inconceivable that any of these pressing issues will be overlooked. With NGO, governmental and industry representatives from across the board meeting, greeting and generally doing their thing, this is actually a very strong opportunity to build a platform for the next year and beyond.
And in case one was in any doubt that it was a shipping industry affair, there’s even a black tie dinner, where the industry can toast its successes and look to the future, confident it has a handle on all the big issues and solid strategies to cope with them.
Source: BIMCO