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

Three of the five International Group affiliates that have announced strategies for the 2024 renewal have included sweeteners totalling more than $80m. But are the payouts as generous as they look? This week’s edition of the podcast offers a deep dive into the P&I landscape at the halfway point in renewal season.

Lloyd's list Insurance Editor David Osler take the lead this week, talking to: Jonathan Andrews, chief executive of Steamship Mutual, who was in dialogue with Alex Vullo, a director of leading broker Gallagher; Tom Bowsher, chief executive of West of England; and Thya Kathiravel, chief underwriting officer of Britain’s biggest P&I club, the recently merged NorthStandard.

Two of the shipping industry’s leading academics, Professor Siri Pettersen Strandenes and Dr Martin Stopford join the podcast this week to discuss everything from the shifting nature of shipping economics to the digital and logistic solutions they would urge the industry consider in response.

To hear more about the topics discussed in this week’s edition make sure you join us next week for a very special Lloyd’s List live webinar on Thursday 16th at 2pm UK time.

We will be discussing whether shipping’s zero carbon transition is on track.

Register now here: https://lnkd.in/erSdy42R

On pretty much every metric you care to think about right now, the industry does not have sufficient pace behind the transitions required.
But you knew that already, so we are exploring the reasons why in a little more depth in this week’s edition of the podcast.
Like last week’s edition these conversations all stem from around the recent Global Maritime Forum held in Athens, but they are part of a wider series of conversations with industry leaders about the tipping points in the industry and how the sector is evolving.
This week, Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief Richard Meade is talking to:
• Saskia Mureau, Digital director at the Port of Rotterdam Authority
• Johannah Christensen, Managing Director, Head of Projects & Programmes, of the Global Maritime Forum
• Paul Taylor, Managing Director, Global Head of Shipping and Offshore, Societe Generale
• Steen Lund, Chief Executive RightShip
• Rajesh Unni, Founder & CEO - Synergy Marine Group

The zero emission capable ships may be coming, but they are not coming quickly enough.
But even if we squint and avoid the question of how environmentally friendly a theoretically environmentally friendly ship really is, the ships aren’t really the biggest problem right now.
It’s the lack of zero carbon fuels coming down the pipeline that’s keeping most industry executives awake at night.
The scale of the challenge to produce green fuels is being vastly underestimated and all the imagined green corridors in the world are not going to scale up demand at a pace that is needed.
For shipping to progress towards the next phase of this fuel transition, and in order for it to be in line with the ambitions set out at MEPC 80, there needs to be a fundamental shift in terms of policy, investment, public private partnerships and let’s face it, a leap of faith by investors on all sides.
The Lloyd’s List Podcast comes from Athens this week, specifically from inside the Global Maritime Forum. And this edition focusses specifically on a few of the key conversations about progress towards shipping’s zero carbon future.
The theme of this year’s GMF was moving from ambition to action - and that’s important because we’re at the point now where we are in danger of stalling and we need to see those pilot projects and agreements in principle start to scale into something more tangible.
Speaking on today’s podcast you will hear:
• Jan Dieleman is the President of Cargill Ocean Transportation, Chair of the Global Maritime Forum
• Michael Parker, Citi global shipping, logistics and offshore chairman and chair of the Poseidon Principles
• Katharine Palmer. Shipping Lead at the UN Climate Champions team
Dr Tristan Smith, Associate Professor in Energy and Transport at UCL and Director of consultancy UMAS

In a world rife with cascading crises – macro-economic fragmentation, retreating development, multilateralism under attack and of course the defining challenge of the age - climate change – maritime trade serves as a stabilizing anchor, holding fast against the turbulent currents of disruption.
But it is changing.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shifted trade lanes – in terms of grain obviously, but it has increased the distances travelled by tankers as the Russian Federation sought new export markets for its cargo and Europe looked for alternative energy suppliers.
The death of deglobalization may have been overstated, but it is changing.
There are now shifts visible in the data towards various forms of de-risking or supply chain resilience measures. Goods continue to be produced through complex supply chains, but the extent of these chains may have plateaued, at least in the short run. Friend shoring, near-shoring, reshoring – however you label it, changes in trade lanes are afoot.
The bigger consequences to all this will be a continued fragmentation of global trade norms and a long term challenge to the multilateralism that has defined the rules based order that oversaw globalised trade to this point.
A rise in protectionist policy and regional bloc trade facilitation agreements promises increased fragmentation, uncertainty and complexities.
As with watch with well founded fear at the events happening in the middle east this week, it is easy enough to see where the tipping points of immediate change lie, But the longer term developments are more complex and slower to show themselves.
In this week’s podcast we start a conversation around these theses with two experts who offer a compelling view on the challenges ahead. The first is an old friend of the Podcast - Jan Hoffmann, Head of the Trade Logistics Branch at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. And he is joined this week by Shamika Sirimanne, who leads UNCTAD's trade logistics programme.

TWO years ago Federal Maritime Commission chairman Daniel Maffei sat in front of the Lloyd’s List microphone and bluntly told the container carriers to buck up their public relations.

They needed to do a better job of explaining the economics of container shipping and the industry’s essential role in supporting commerce, was his basic beef. Well, a lot has happened since then so when Maffei was in town recently we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to drag him once again into a small office and insist that answer another stream of questions from our team.

You can hear the combined forces of our containers editor James Baker, our US correspondent Tomer Raanan and Janet Porter, chair of the Lloyd’s list editorial board throwing the questions his way as we discuss everything from the image of the industry to alliances and vexatious complaints from shippers.