Lloyd's List: The Shipping Podcast Lloyd's List

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, tirelessly swinging at an endless stream of baseballs coming his way.

Like most top decision-makers in our industry today, he feels his energy is being consumed by dealing with a constant stream of emergencies, with the rest spent puzzling out an increasingly elusive future.

And one of the key questions the shipping veteran faces: is his company, which aims to become a frontrunner in the green transition, betting too much on that path amid all the uncertainties surrounding decarbonisation?

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 carrier fleet growth for almost a decade has also been a pretty significant contributing factor in tightening vessel supply, all of which is making for an interesting market right now for those in the dry bulk space.
In this edition of our mini-series of market outlook podcasts, Lloyd’s List’s market’s editor Rob Willmington talks to Bimco’s chief shipping analyst Niels Rasmussen about the dry cargo market prospects for the rest of the year and beyond.

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 up, improving earnings but increasing costs for shipping lines.
For now, that looks set to continue but with a glut of new capacity still coming out of the yards, concerns remain that even rerouting won’t absorb it all.
The Red Sea rerouting has favoured the bold in the sense that those playing the spot market have reaped the full scale benefits on offer. Spot market rates jumped by 200% in the first quarter, but the longer term contracts are not reflecting the “crazy” market.
Right now though, everyone is preparing themselves for the high season and the big question is what the third quarter will bring. We have seen a record high filling factor, so if the fleet is really that fully utilised, how many more ships do we need?
Will we see a continued drop in spot rates not reflected in long terms and how will the power dynamics of the market play out over the coming weeks and months?
To guide you through the current state of affairs in the market and the outlook for the quarters ahead, Lloyd’s List’s containers editor James Baker leads this edition of the outlook podcast series, joined by Xeneta chief analyst Peter Sand

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 expecting anything particularly untoward to hit the positive sentiment until at least 2026. Beyond that though things get interesting and what’s happening now in terms of tanker orders flooding in will ultimate determine whether 2027 is a downward swing or a crash.
Because, while things are admittedly looking pretty rosy right now for the energy shipping markets, the risks are far from removed.
If the fleet supply inefficiencies caused by the redirection of Russian oil exports away from Europe, primarily east of Suez, were to suddenly evaporate we would be looking at a very different picture.
The wider market remains delicately poised with positive and negative drivers so far largely offsetting one another
And let’s not forget OPEC.
The cartel has installed production cuts since November 2022 to artificially buoy oil prices. Analysts estimate Opec+ has about 6mn b/d of spare capacity it can unleash on to global markets to lower prices if they spike into the triple digits to prevent demand destruction.
To guide you through the current state of affairs in the tanker sector Andrew Wilson, Head of Research and Consultancy Services at BRS shipbrokers talks to Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief Richard Meade.

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 (LISCR).
In this podcast, he says there is a lack of uniformity in the qualifications and performance of PSC inspectors across the globe and expresses concern that “there is no clarity” over how vessels are inspected. He is also critical of how defects are recorded and dealt with, causing adverse impacts on shipowners and other stakeholders associated with a ship.
During the podcast, he stresses that LISCR has good cooperation with PSC regimes around the world and says that there are many excellent PSC officers but, nonetheless, he finds that there are “different interpretations of the rules” in the various port state control areas that a vessel might visit during a voyage. “There is a lot of room for improvement,” he said, and he believes that many others share his concerns but that they “prefer to stay quiet” to avoid “friction points with port state control”.
He took the opportunity to explain why a single ship might receive different outcomes in different PSC regimes, with factors including the background, experience and qualifications of individual inspectors, leading to different deficiencies being found and differing interpretations of the seriousness of those deficiencies.
In particular, he highlighted differences between how deficiencies that require action to be taken are categorised. IMO’s publication Procedures for Port State Control identifies a number of ‘code’ numbers that can be noted on an inspection report as shorthand to indicate the required response, and Mr Castillero is particularly vocal about two of them: ‘Code 17’, which identifies deficiencies that need to be addressed before a ship can depart from a port, and ‘Code 30’, which highlights deficiencies that require a ship to be detained.
Both have the same effect in practice, he said, but a Code 30 detention creates an adverse record not only for the ship, but also its owner, flag, class society and others, he says in the podcast.
He goes on to suggest some solutions to the problems he has identified, setting out some proposals about how the international cooperation that would be required could be coordinated. The benefits would be significant, he believes, not least for crews who have to navigate the various PSC regimes and their inspection procedures.
He also believes that LISCR’s size puts it in a position “to initiate a conversation with port state and flag state control to find a possible point of understanding” to start the discussion that would be needed to achieve this cooperation. “The Liberian registry has been globally recognised for taking the initiative,” he said.

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 afloat.
From supply chain vulnerabilities to energy security, government and the general public at large have never been more aware of the intrinsic role that shipping plays in its daily lives.
Trade is still coupled with economic growth in Europe and the influence of European shipping on the supply chain needs to be taken into account.
There is an opportunity to position shipping more centrally in whatever flavour of European politics emerges triumphant this summer.
But is this industry ready and prepared to capitalise on its visibility by having a grown-up conversation with policymakers and regulators?
The jury is out.
Joining Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief this week to discuss whether we are having the right conversations in European shipping are:
• Magda Kopczyńska the director general for the European Commission’s DG Move – the directorate of Mobility and Transport

• Sotiris Raptis, secretary general of the European Community Shipowners’ association