Shipping’s secret trade: the fightback

Last year, both Belgium and the Netherlands, home to the key ports of Antwerp-Bruges and Rotterdam, reported a dramatic decline in the volume of cocaine seized. As the traditional gateways into Europe for legal as well as illegal cargo, this is surely cause for celebration, or at the very least a pat on the back. The only problem? Seizures in Portugal, Italy, Greece and other southern European countries increased. Which begs the question, how on earth do you stop smuggling? Lloyd’s List reporter Joshua Minchin again speaks to four experts at the very frontline in the fight against smuggling to understand how public-private cooperation can identify high-risk containers and push back against what can seem like an incessant tide. Plus, UNODC’s Bob van den Berghe explains how work in source countries can prevent illegal cargo ever getting on board a commercial vessel and strengthen relationships between law enforcement agencies at opposite sides of an ocean. Joining Joshua on the podcast are: • Joe Kramek, chief executive, World Shipping Council • Bob Van den Berghe, deputy head PCCP, UN Office on Drugs and Crime • Niels Vanlaer, harbour master at the port of Antwerp-Bruges • Robert Campbell, programme director, United for Wildlife

Think of a product carried by sea, and the most likely things to come to mind are consumer goods, iron ore, coal, or perhaps even bauxite. But billions of dollars’ worth of illegal narcotics and thousands of species of animal are carried on cargo and containerships every year and smuggled through the world’s biggest ports, particularly in Europe. Before analysing how shipping can get a grip on this secret trade, Lloyd’s List reporter Joshua Minchin spoke to several experts leading the fight against smuggling to get an idea of just how big of a problem smuggling is in our industry. Hear how cartels smuggle consignments of rhino horn by the container load and even threaten crew to force them into transporting kilos of cocaine. Joining Joshua on the podcast are: Joe Kramek, chief executive, World Shipping Council Bob Van den Berghe, deputy head PCCP, UN Office on Drugs and Crime Niels Vanlaer, harbourmaster at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges Robert Campbell, programme director, United for Wildlife

Earlier this month, the International Maritime Organization agreed its net zero framework at the 83rd meeting of its Marine Environment Protection Committee. If you’re not sure what was agreed or the impact it will have on shipping, make sure you listen to our MEPC post-mortem episode of the podcast, which is available here. A lot of shipping’s decarbonisation chips have been placed on e-fuels. This is where an electrolyser is used to split hydrogen from water and combine that so-called green hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia, or CO2 to make synthetic methane or methanol. E-fuels are by far the most expensive option, but they're also seen as the best way to decarbonise the industry in the long term, but not by everyone. So are we placing far too much stock in e-fuels? Or can they live up to their salvatory status and deliver shipping to net zero in time? Joining Declan on the podcast this week are: Michael Liebreich, Bloomber New Energy Finance founder Dr Tristan Smith, University College London associate professor in energy and transport

Philosophers have for over two millennia debated the irresistible force paradox, usually formulated as ‘What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?’ Variants of the problem date back as far as China in the third century BCE and ancient Greece. The world got one answer to the question on March 26, 2024, when a Singapore-flagged boxship hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge that spanned Baltimore harbour in the US. The vessel was inevitably damaged, the bridge collapsed, and six people from a maintenance crew working on the bridge at the time were killed. Within days, the owners and managers of Dali filed for limitation of liability. If their suit is successful, Grace Ocean, Synergy Marine and their insurers will pay out no more than $44m. In this edition of the podcast, Lloyd’s List insurance and law editor David Osler unpacks what happens next in what could turn out to be one of the costliest marine casualties of all time.

On Friday, some 20 years of decarbonisation work at the International Maritime Organization culminated in a historic agreement, with countries voting 63-16 in favour of an emissions fuel standard with a built-in carbon price. If it Is formally adopted in October, this will be the first binding global carbon price on any industry; a genuinely momentous achievement that will change the future of shipping. What they’ve come up with is highly complex and is going to take the industry a while to fully digest. But fear not, we have three brave experts willing to help make sense of it and tell us, hopefully, what comes next. Marie Fricaudet is a senior research fellow at the UCL Energy Institute Aoife O’Leary is a lawyer, economist, and the chief executive of Opportunity Green And Rico Luman, a senior sector economist at ING Bank

Richard Buckley named his company 90 Percent of Everything to reflect shipping’s vital role in transporting the vast majority of everything that is traded worldwide. He is convinced that we’re on the threshold of a new way of looking at ship management, based on his experience of developing software to support what he calls ‘Management by Exception’ (MbE)

Even before Donald Trump pronounced the end of gloablisation, the shipping industry was effectively operating in a self-induced state of paralysis. Uncertainty over a looming trade war, the regulatory cost of carbon and just how long the global current disruption can hide a fundamentally unbalanced shipping market had led executives across the industry to conclude that doing nothing for the moment is likely to be the safest bet they could make. That pause is now a hard stop. What occurred last week was not just the US starting a global trade war, or sparking a rout in stock markets. It was the world's hyper power firmly turning its back on the globalisation process it had championed, and from which it handsomely profited in recent decades. What is president Trump going to do next? What can Europe realistically do in response? Are we going to have peace in the Middle East and is the Red Sea opening anytime soon? Does Russia somehow come in from the cold? It’s not just clarity from the International Maritime Organization shipowners are searching for now… Joining Richard on the podcast this week are: Chris Wiernicki, chief executive of American Bureau of Shipping Knut Orbeck Nielsen, chief executive of DNV Maritime Eman Abdalla, global operations director at Cargill Ocean Transportation Nick Brown, chief executive, Lloyd's Register Adam Kent, managing director at Maritime Strategies International

WITH geopolitical risk changing seemingly by the day and policy from the world’s biggest economy updated on a weekly (and sometimes hourly) basis, it might seem impossible for the shipping industry to plan long-term. While this is a sector which thrives on volatility, when assets have 20-year lifespans, some degree of certainty is essential to make prudent long-term decisions. So how can shipowners decide where to put their money when the ground they shift on is always moving? Richard Meade led an assembled panel of some of the brightest minds in the industry at Singapore Maritime Week for the latest Lloyd’s List Outlook forum, and in this week’s episode of the podcast we’re bringing you the best bits. Joining Richard in Singapore were: Janeyndu Krishna, head of maritime advisors at Drewry Nick Brown, chief executive at Lloyd’s Register Eman Abdallah, global operations director at Cargill Ocean Transportation Mikel Skov, chief executive at Hafnia Captain Rajesh Unni, founder and chief executive of Synergy Group

This episode of the Lloyd's List Podcast was brought to you by Wirana - visit www.wirana.com/ for more information GREEN ship finance arrived a few years ago to much fanfare and hope. But times have changed. Lenders face many of the same hurdles as the rest of shipping: Uncertain regulation and technology, plus a lack of clear standards for what is and isn't green. But they also have another challenge. Cashed-up shipowners are sitting on piles of pandemic profits and paying back their loans. This means even holding on to a shipping portfolio is a challenge. Fierce competition among lenders has thinned margins, making it harder to offer borrowers much of a discount for greener goals. President Trump is back in; ESG investing is out. Or is it? Joining Declan on the podcast this week are: Jan-Henrik Huebner, global head of shipping advisory practice, DNV Maritime Tobias Backer, executive director, Pelagic Capital

AI “might be the salvation to humankind, or the opposite, as some fear”, says Lars Riisberg, CEO of RINA Digital Solutions, in this Lloyd’s List podcast. Today, with large language models such as ChatGPT giving the general public some understanding of AI’s capabilities, he says that AI “will surely change the way we work dramatically”. During his career devoted to data and its application that goes back to his university thesis in 1989, which looked at using AI in the automation industry, Riisberg has developed a positive outlook about AI. He is confident that, for shipping, it will have a positive effect on many current objectives, including decarbonisation, compliance and safety. In his opinion, digitalisation and the use of AI will help shipping’s decarbonisation agenda and general operational efficiency. In particular, “the establishment, verification and use of management systems are spot on for use of AI,” he says. Yet all these benefits rely on data and one of his podcast themes revolves around how AI itself can be used to ensure that data is gathered in reliable ways. He listed some key data sources and acknowledged that “they all have their challenges when it comes to quality.” In his podcast, Riisberg mentions some practical instances where he believes AI can make a positive change, for example by using it to guide crew in how they carry out and report tasks. At an operational scale, he said that AI is already being used to establish reference performance standards in different sea states and to highlight deviations in fuel consumption compared to those standards and alert the crew. He also provided examples of where AI can be applied to management tasks but said that RINA's experience has given some insights into the pitfalls of AI. “AI is generally very ‘polite’ and will try to come up with an answer… even when there is no good answer to a question,” he said, so “you will still have to be able to evaluate the answers and take your own personal judgement of the correctness of the answers.” Looking ahead, he predicted that it will become possible to interrogate data and written material by speaking to it through an AI interface and concluded “being able to ask questions about technically structured data… will be a new focus area for AI in the coming years.”