There is a need in the industry for a more fair and nuanced way of categorizing ships according to their emissions profile says the people behind the tool.

”If scrubbers and IMO2020 were the talk of town last year, EEXI and GHG ratings relating to Green House Gas emissions certainly is the main focus in the industry this year”, says Anders Liengaard, Partner at the maritime advisory company Liengaard & Roschmann. Together with his partner, Søren Roschmann, they launched Vesselindex® back in 2018 with the aim to provide the industry with an online independent tool for benchmarking of ships. Now they are adding a new feature – Vesselindex®-GHG – to the platform to support the industry with a transparent and fair emissions rating delivered in an easy-to-understand format.

“EEXI and GHG issues often lands on the table in the technical department”, says Anders Liengaard. “But EEXI and GHG ratings are heavily impacting the commercial operation as well, hence the importance of delivering a tool that can easily communicate the, often, technical founded language into something that commercial people can relate to, in an easy and fast manner”, he continues.

GHG ratings are important not only for Owners but also for Charterers. By 2023 regulations from IMO will restrict some vessels in their trading capabilities in relation to speed. This is important already now when charterers are looking at period ships which duration will extend into 2023 and beyond. In addition to identifying whether a vessel is compliant in relation to the upcoming IMO regulations, the feature will also contain a GHG Rating much in line with the one known from Rightship.

“We want to offer, what we believe is a more fair and balanced rating which is dynamic rather than static. By looking at ratings in relation to the speed, Vesselindex®-GHG offers a nuanced picture of a vessel’s emissions, thus providing the Owners with the ability to act and comply by slowing down, should they have a vessel which from the outset is not living up to the charterer’s standards.
Source: Vesselindex, Liengaard & Roschmann

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https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/vesselindex-new-emissions-rating/

Drewry’s latest Container Forecaster report includes huge upgrades for freight rates and carrier profits as market faces extended period of under supply.

The latest edition of Drewry’s Container Forecaster finds that 2021 will be the first year in the history of container shipping when carrier profits approach $100 billion and average freight rates jump by 50%, against a background of huge operational disruptions to the port and ship systems.

Many of the themes covered in the latest edition will be familiar. Port congestion and equipment availability challenges, for example, have not gone away and continue to drive market prices, but what is different from three months ago is that some of the numbers are much bigger.

The latest edition, published on 30 June, includes a relatively small forecast upgrade for world port throughput in 2021-22, but significantly inflated outlooks for freight rates and carrier profits over the same period.

Volumes are expected to continue to rise through the 3Q21 peak season and to end the year with annual growth of approximately 10%. There will still be growth next year, but probably only about half as strong as consumer spending is expected to move back towards services as Covid-related restrictions are lifted.

The containership fleet is not growing fast enough to meet insatiable demand right now. A scarcity of open charter fixtures means that some lines are scouring the second-hand market for expensive new assets to add to the pile, but others can only supplement with newbuild deliveries, or are simply having to make do with what they have.

Source: Drewry Maritime Research

Cautious newbuild contracting of recent years means that we expect the cellular fleet to only increase by 4.2% this year and 2.8% in 2022, in both cases significantly below that of world port throughput projections.

Appetite for new tonnage has accelerated since 2H20 and in less than six full months this year’s contracting activity is already close to the record 2.7 million teu placed in 2007.

Drewry maintains the view that high levels of newbuild contracting for 2023 pose a risk of overcapacity returning to the market during that year, but future supply requirements are heavily clouded by new environment regulations due to become law at the start of 2023, that may or may not see significant chunks of the containership fleet slowdown in order to comply.

This edition contains a special summary analysis of the action points from the June IMO MEPC76 meeting as well as some of the potential pathways for the industry to meet the decarbonisation targets.

The big change to our forecasts comes from our freight rate and profitability outlooks. Box shipping rates reached new highs in 2Q21 as spot rates continued to surge and contract pricing followed suit. At the moment it is hard to predict when prices will peak as worsening supply-chain disruption continues to stoke pricing on a weekly basis.

We are now getting accustomed to seeing triple-digit annual growth rates for spot rates on most lanes. That these instances are no longer shocking is further proof, if needed, that the market truly is crazy right now.

Average freight rates (spot and contract) across global trades are expected to rise by around 50% in 2021, an uplift of as much as 30% on our March forecast, indicative of the acceleration in pricing seen already through 1H21.

The extreme increases in freight rates have naturally translated into blockbusting carrier profits. Carriers posted a record EBIT result in 1Q21 of $27.1 billion, up from what now looks a miniscule $1.6bn in same period one year ago. So impressive are the latest quarterly results, they even eclipsed the full-year 2020 EBIT of $25.4bn.

Source: Drewry Maritime Research, derived from ocean carrier financial reports

Given the substantially higher freight rate forecast for this year, Drewry has made a major upgrade to our full-year 2021 industry EBIT outlook. We are now forecasting industry EBIT of approximately $80 billion for this year – up from our previous estimate of $35bn. If freight rates surpass expectations in the remainder of the year, we would not be surprised to see an annual profit line in the region of $100bn.

For 2022, we expect EBIT to drop by a bit more than one-third due to softening freight rates and rising costs that may stay higher for longer with many carriers locking into expensive longer-term charter fixtures. Nonetheless, it would represent another astonishing performance by historical standards.

Regrettably, Drewry is less optimistic about a solution being found to fix the supply chain disruption and thinks the market is facing medium-term (or extended) under-supply. Events at the South China port of Yantian (a Covid-19 outbreak in May hobbled operations for nearly a month, with knock-on congestion at nearby ports in Asia), and earlier in the Suez Canal, demonstrate just how fragile the container shipping eco-system is and how challenging it is to try and build in more resilience.

Source: Drewry Maritime Research

Supply side disruption has become the key driver of freight rates and remains the top sensitivity to our forecasts. Drewry now thinks lower port productivity will continue into 2022.

Subsequently, Drewry expects the Global supply-demand index to average 105.7 in 2021, up 0.9 points on our previous assessment. Any reading above 100 indicates tightness of supply in the market.

Drewry estimates that 16% of worldwide effective capacity (the slots available to the market) will have been lost this year as direct consequence of lower port productivity, following on from an 11% reduction last year.

In an alternative reality when Covid-19 did not damage port operations and productivity was maintained at 2019-levels the Global Supply-Demand Index would have averaged only 84.0 in 2020 and 89.0 this year. That timeline is not seeing the record freight rates and carrier profits we are experiencing.

These are some of the factors required to fix the supply chain and get containers flowing as they should, in our view:

• Port productivity needs to improve – dependent on avoiding Covid outbreaks and for less liner service disruption
• More reliable and predictable liner services to give ports a better chance to clear the backlog – likely dependent on improved port productivity
• A slowdown in Asia to US demand to promote more equal distribution of capacity and equipment

As you can see, this is something of a circular problem. Shipping lines alone do not have the power to fix things, but the industry at large somehow needs to find a way to break the vicious circle.

Source: Drewry Maritime Research

Our view

Even if carriers do revert to type and the current newbuild craze ends the upcycle in 2023, they will have made so much money between 2020-22 that they will be set up for years to come. They could potentially make as much profit in this window as they could have hoped in a decade, or more.

Carriers’ only account in deficit is public relations. With increasing attention on shipping’s environmental footprint and tax contributions, lines are in danger of being cast as profiteering villains, unsympathetic to the needs of their customers. We hope they will be good global citizens and do more to help improve the efficiency of the supply chain.

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https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/container-shipping-who-wants-to-be-a-multi-billionaire/

The dry bulk market is expected to post additional gains in the weeks to come, thanks to a growing list of positive fundamentals. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Intermodal said that “the strong freight performance since the beginning of year has continued for the dry bulk market with earnings being at the highest level in over a decade. As a result, vessels’ values have improved substantially, whilst demolition activity has stalled over the past two months. Older ships are attracting a lot of SnP interest at levels substantially above their scrap values. On top of this, the dry bulk orderbook continues to hover at low levels, as yards’ slots are filled with orders on other more profitable sectors, namely containers”.

According to Intermodal’s SnP Broker, Mr. Vasilis Moiris, “China has been the primary driving force behind the market improvement, as steel production has been running at record high levels, while demand for grains has accelerated owing to the better trade relationships with USA and the pig herd recovery from African Swine Fever which previously had a substantial impact in the specific trade.

Source: Intermodal

What is more, commodities demand from the rest of the world is accelerating and intensifying trade inefficiencies in favor of dry bulk trade i.e. international steel prices are at record high levels, West-East steel price arbitrages, industrial output growth globally driving demand for iron ore and coking coal and a projected above average hot summer is seeing Europe and Asia competing for thermal coal. Minor bulks demand is also upbeat and sustains the upward freight trend for the geared dry bulk segment. The commodities price rally is in the meantime incentivizing more production and exports by miners, in order to take advantage of high prices, thus market players expect seaborne volumes to increase further in the coming months”.

The shipbroker added that “increased trade has resulted in port congestion mounting to multi year highs; Port congestion in the Pacific is also supporting the supply side in the short term mainly in the Panamax sector whilst it is expected to have a positive impact on Capesize as well. The freight market picture has been positively reflected into asset values. It is not though that the larger sizes have shadowed the geared ships, as in comparison geared vessels and Panamax in sequence have so far performed better in proportion to their value than a Capesize. Nonetheless, current FFA levels are supporting a further improvement in the spot market for Capesize during the second half of the year. If the spot market catches up pace with period earnings suggested by FFA levels as market participants anticipate, we should expect SnP interest to increase in the next quarters for the largest size and asset values to appreciate in tandem”, Moiris concluded.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

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https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/dry-bulk-market-looking-for-next-rally/

PUBLISHED JUL 5, 2021 3:46 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

A ship chartered by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF) has been detained by Italian authorities after a coast guard inspection identified numerous safety issues aboard the Norwegian-flagged vessel. While saying that it is ready to make the necessary steps to get the vessel back to sea, the medical NGO is also accusing the authorities of pursuing political objectives under the guise of inspections as a means to interrupt their work with migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean.

The charity arranged a charter of the 1,293 dwt research survey ship Geo Barents in May 2021 from the Norwegian shipping company Uksnoy Barents. Built in 2007, the vessel is classed by Bureau Veritas and records show that its certificates have been amended to include a class notation for up to 300 survivors. A review of previous inspections shows no recent violations and a history of minor violations such as expired charts, worn or missing safety gear.

MSF reports that the current contract for the vessel is registered and fully compliant with the standards of national, international, and maritime regulations. The Geo Barents, they said in their statement meets all the technical and legal requirements to sail and perform SARe at sea and has been fully equipped to perform SAR, with a medical clinic and recovery rooms.

Following a 14-hour inspection in the port of Augusta on the island of Sicily, on July 2, the Geo Barents was detained. MSF admits that it was after 22 deficiencies were identified, 10 of which were reportedly grounds for the ship to be detained. In addition to a series of minor irregularities that are easily rectifiable, MSF says the Italian authorities disputed the ship’s suitability to carry out systematic search and rescue activities and allege that the ship had too many people on board.

“International law does not stipulate specific international classification for humanitarian rescue ships,” MSF said in a written statement. “Such a disingenuous interpretation of maritime law disregards the fact that rescue operations, as per the duty of shipmasters to provide assistance to people in distress at sea, are uncontrollable situations. Therefore, the number of people on board should not be taken into account for the purpose of ascertaining the compliance to other provisions of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.”

The Geo Barents has been operating in the Mediterranean since June. Between June 10 and 12, MSF says the ship performed a series of rescues. A total of 410 people, all of whom showed signs of extreme exhaustion and various vulnerabilities, were taken aboard according to the NGO. They said this included 16 women, of whom six were traveling alone and one was pregnant, as well as 101 unaccompanied children. Most people were from war-torn countries, including Syria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Mali.

“While port state controls are legitimate maritime procedures, developed to ensure the safety of navigation at sea, these inspections have been instrumentalized by state authorities to target NGO ships in a discriminatory way,” said Duccio Staderini, MSF search and rescue representative. “We can therefore only conclude that this is politically motivated. Inspections of NGO vessels in Italian ports are long and thorough, aiming at finding irregularities in order to prevent the ship from returning to sea to save lives. We are faced with a crushing reality: while humanitarian NGO vessels are detained, lives continue to be needlessly lost in the Mediterranean.”

The group alleges that since 2019, the Italian authorities have conducted 16 Port State Controls on humanitarian rescue vessels, leading to administrative detention on 13 occasions. In total, they said that these vessels had been detained for a total of over 1,000 days. At present, MSF says the Ocean Viking, run by the organization SOS Mediterranee, is the only rescue ship operational in the central Mediterranean. Five NGO search and rescue vessels (Sea-Watch 4, Sea-Watch 3, Sea-Eye 4, Louise Michel, and Geo Barents) are all currently under administrative detention.

MSF said it is dedicated to its mission and is calling upon the Italian authorities to swiftly facilitate the release of its search and rescue ship, to enable its return to sea as soon as possible.

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https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/italians-detain-ngo-vessel-doing-sar-ops-after-port-inspection

PUBLISHED JUL 5, 2021 3:45 PM BY ROYAL NAVY NEWS

The seven year, $10 million dream of restoring one of the last surviving D-Day warships has been crowned with a national award.

Landing Craft Tank 7074 – which now enjoys pride of place on Southsea waterfront at the D-Day Story museum – has been named as the restoration/conservation project of the year at the UK’s national Museum and Heritage Awards.

Judges said the challenges faced by the team from the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the D-Day Story to turn a sunken hull into a visitor attraction which captures the spirit of 1944 and those who served in such ships had been overcome “brilliantly.”

LCT7074 is the last of more than 800 landing craft (tank) which delivered Allied armor to the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 – and one of only a small number of vessels still left from the Operation Neptune armada.

When the restoration project began in 2014, the ship was sunk at her mooring in Birkenhead. With the help of lottery cash – which pumped well over $7 million into the overall project – the vessel was raised and brought to Portsmouth for a two-year restoration job in the naval base before the refurbished craft was moved to its new permanent home on the waterfront.

Image courtesy Royal Navy

Image courtesy Royal Navy

The ship, with one Sherman and one Churchill tank embarked, is now open to the public to view with films and displays explaining her role in June 1944.

The award citation reads: “The scale of this project is astonishing and was, without doubt, challenging. It was detailed in its conservation principles and brilliantly delivered – the judges felt that it was a remarkable achievement.”

Professor Dominic Tweddle, Director General of the National Museum of the Royal Navy said the award recognized “the unique and extraordinary skills” the team of conservators possessed.

“The challenge to conserve a fragile low-grade steel vessel made to last months and ensure she is robust enough to tell the vital story of D-Day for generations to come was immense,” he added.

Image courtesy D-Day Story Portsmouth

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https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/new-home-for-the-last-surviving-landing-craft-tank-used-on-d-day

PUBLISHED JUL 5, 2021 5:38 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

As the next step in its efforts to enhance the sustainability of its shipping operations through the use of LNG technology, French shipping giant CMA CGM Group is joining in a project to develop France’s first BioLNG facility. The Coalition for the Energy of the Future announces the launch of the feasibility study for the first French project for BioLNG production within a large maritime port.

The members of the coalition will work together to undertake the study for the feasibility of liquefied biomethane (BioLNG) production at Marseille’s major shipping port. This includes EveRé, operator of the multi-process household waste treatment plant commissioned by Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence, Elengy, a subsidiary of Engie, operating LNG terminals at Fos-sur-Mer, TotalEnergies, and the CMA CGM Group.

Produced by converting the biodegradable part of household waste from the Marseille Provence region, the BioLNG would be supplied for ships departing from the Grand Port Maritime in Marseille and would be used primarily for the CMA CGM Group’s LNG-powered vessels.

According to the coalition, the project forms a circular economic system, using the area’s household waste will help reduce local air pollutants (nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and fine particles). It would also improve air quality and the quality of life for people living in the region while supporting the energy transition in the shipping industry. Combining the BioLNG with the dual-fuel gas engine technology developed by CMA CGM has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 67 percent relative to well-to-wake VLSFO according to the partnership.

The project also fits into the local ecosystem, benefiting from the already existing infrastructure at the Grand Port Maritime, including EveRé’s waste methanization unit, Elengy’s LNG terminals, which will be used for the storage and delivery of the BioLNG, TotalEnergies’ bunker vessel, which will be located at the port as of January 2022, and CMA CGM’s fleet of LNG-powered vessels.

The CMA CGM Group, Engie, and TotalEnergies have already been working together for several months as part of the Coalition for the Energy of the Future. Launched in late 2019, the Coalition for the Energy of the Future aims at accelerating the development of future energies and technologies to sustain new green mobility models and reduce the impact of transport and logistics on climate change.

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https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/feasibility-study-for-french-biolng-production-to-fuel-cma-cgm-ships

PUBLISHED JUL 5, 2021 5:09 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

A new Norwegian-German partnership is proposing a solution for zero-emission shipping based on liquid organic hydrogen carrier which they believe can revolutionize the use of hydrogen as a marine fuel. According to the partnership, the new process addresses the concerns of safety as it is neither inflammable nor explosive while providing a means of storing and transporting hydrogen for use in propulsion.

Hydrogenious LOHC Maritime AS is a joint venture between Johannes Østensjø dy AS, which operates offshore vessels, and Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies GmbH, a German company that has developed and patented a technology for loading hydrogen in a thermal oil as well as releasing it where and when it’s needed. They will work to commercialize the organic oil loaded with hydrogen as a liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC). The company is aiming to have a megawatt-scale commercial product ready by 2025 and the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment will be providing nearly $3 million through its Enova project to fund the development of the hydrogen oil.

“Of all the potential zero-emission technologies, we find LOHC the most promising one. That is why we have prepared all six service operation vessels under construction in our subsidiary, Edda Wind, for LOHC-based propulsion,” said Håvard Framnes, Investment Director in Østensjø. “Safety is of course very important for us in these evaluations. However, the fact that we can use existing fuel infrastructure and are able to use familiar fueling procedures is of importance. In addition, we can easily carry enough energy onboard our vessels in order to operate in normal intervals of up to four weeks without refueling.”

By binding the hydrogen to the LOHC, the partners said they are creating a safe and low-cost technology. An important challenge for using hydrogen in shipping is safety. They believe that LOHC solves this and provides a safe, easy, and efficient way of storing and transporting hydrogen.

They believe that this technology will revolutionize the supply chain for hydrogen, as LOHC can be used to store and transport large quantities of hydrogen under ambient conditions, using the already existing fossil fuel infrastructure. The carrier oil – Benzyltoluene – can be loaded and unloaded with hydrogen many hundreds of times and is recyclable. The energy density of LOHC is also favorable, as a vessel can store two to three times more energy compared to compressed hydrogen.

“Our technology is very suitable for maritime use,” says Dr. Daniel Teichmann, CEO and founder of Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies. He believes it will be optimal to first apply the technology to the shipping industry. “Hydrogenious LOHC Maritime AS will make our proprietary LOHC technology available for onboard solutions for sustainable maritime traffic.”

The planned application will integrate three core components on-board: The LOHC Release Unit, which releases hydrogen from the liquid organic carrier Benzyltoluene on demand on the ship, as well as a fuel cell and an interface to the ship’s power management system.

Enova SF has agreed to fund the development of a 200 kW pilot of the LOHC/fuel cell propulsion system with a grant of approximately $3 million.

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https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/liquid-organic-hydrogen-could-facilitate-hydrogen-as-propulsion-fuel

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Maersk signs up for world’s first container fuelled by carbon neutral methanol

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Ocean Yield and Quantum Pacific add newbuild boxship to joint venture

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Boxship sales double in H1, feeder prices quadruple in the space of one year