Peter Sand
Peter Sand to offer future industry insight at Slide2Open Shipping Finance conference in Athens, Greece
Peter Sand will offer his view of the most relevant future commercial aspects to the shipping industry and cover global macroeconomic developments as well as the current state of the three commercial shipping segments in Athens at the Slide2Open Shipping Finance conference on 30 January 2020. BIMCO’s Chief Shipping Analyst will take the stage at 12:30 pm.
The conference will offer valuable insights into current market developments and the shipping markets from a financial perspective. Other speakers from the industry will be present at the event including Professor Martin Stopford, non-executive president at Clarksons Research Services, Anastasios V. Papagiannopoulos, Immediate Past President of BIMCO and Principal at Common Progress Co Na S.A. and Giannis Plakiotakis, Greek minister of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy.
The conference will be held at the Divani Caravel Hotel in Athens and additional information about the conference can be found here.
2020 – a challenging year ahead
Only weeks into 2020, the year has been fraught with geopolitical unrest and market uncertainty. The global economy slowed down through 2019, but the IMF has projected a slight economic pickup with an estimated growth of 3.3% in 2020. However, risks remain skewed to the downside as the world is still faced with global trade tensions and rising debt levels in many economies. The relatively low global economic growth outlook will certainly also prove to be a hindrance for seaborne demand growth in the year ahead.
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While some of the commercial shipping segments have entered the new decade better than others, BIMCO believes that it will be hard for some segments to bear or pass on the additional fuel costs of the newly implemented IMO2020 Sulphur Cap Regulation.
The oil tanker market demand growth is set to be positively affected by IMO2020, but this potential demand boost will surely be constrained by high fleet growth throughout the past year.
The dry bulk segment is currently riding on the back of plummeting freight rates, driven largely by seasonality, but also a deteriorating fundamental balance of supply and demand. The total dry bulk fleet grew 4% through 2019, which greatly outpaced the estimated demand growth of a mere 1.1%. A further deterioration of the fundamental market balance is also expected for 2020 with low demand growth.
Over the past month, container ship freight rates have increased substantially. However, this is more in line with market seasonality and less indicative of carriers being successful at passing on costs through the bunker adjustment factors (BAF). Container ship fleet growth is set to be lower in 2020 than previous years, but still at a challenging level when accounting for demand generated by the global GDP growth and a falling trade-to-GDP multiplier.
