What to look out for in dry bulk and shipbuilding in 2026

In the last episode in our series preparing you for the year ahead, we turn our attention to the dry bulk and shipbuilding sector. Senior reporter Greg Miller and markets editor Robert Willmington assess how each market fared in 2025 before laying out what you should be across in 2026, including an increased focus on tonne miles for the dry bulk sector and the continuing interest shown by national governments in shipbuilding as a strategic business. Will China continue importing record amounts of iron ore? Does it matter if volumes drop off if voyage length increases? Will we see more tankers and bulkers being built or will yards continue to fixate on containership orders? Listen to find out the answers to these questions and more and ensure you’re prepared for what the rest of 2026 has to throw at shipping. Learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here: www.lloydslistintelligence.com/products/…oyds-list

SHIPPING’S road to net zero was made longer and more complicated in 2025, a year which was supposed to clear up a lot of the uncertainty hanging over shipowners looking to make investment decisions for years to come. But events at the International Maritime Organization in October’s extraordinary meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee mean shipowners must again wait and see if a global carbon price can be agreed, and if so what it means for the future of their fleets. Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief Richard Meade and senior reporter Declan Bush help answer a few of the outstanding questions, or at least narrow down the ones to ask, and make sure you’re prepared for the year ahead when it comes to decarbonisation policy and technology. Learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here: www.lloydslistintelligence.com/products/…oyds-list

AS we continue our series to prepare you for the year ahead, attention turn to the container market, which is dominated by one big question: will carriers return to the Red Sea this year or not? Some have already signalled a gradual return, while other have kept their counsel. Lloyd’s List deputy editor Linton Nightingale and Infospectrum senior analyst Neil Dekker explain why a return to the Red Sea could spell a rate hike initially, but will ultimately be bad news for carriers. Plus, Linton explains why the demise of the workhorse of the container market could be bad news for some ports. Learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here: www.lloydslistintelligence.com/products/…oyds-list

It's been an exciting start to the year. That somewhat of an understatement comes from Lloyd’s List senior reporter Greg Miller, who in this week’s episode of the Lloyd’s List Podcast tries to make sense of the crazy start to 2026 and how geopolitical events might affect tanker markets. Trump’s intervention in Venezuela has changed the game completely, but it follows historically high crude tanker rates in 2025, reaching the six-figure mark at some points, before trending downwards towards the end of the year. Greg talks us through the market outlook for both crude and product tankers in the wake of such instability and gives you a big picture of the year ahead for one of shipping’s most exciting sectors. Learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here: www.lloydslistintelligence.com/products/…oyds-list

As events in 2026 continue to move at considerable pace, ensuring compliance and assessing risk as a shipping company is only becoming more difficult. Help is at hand though, as Lloyd’s List senior risk and compliance analyst Bridget Diakun and maritime risk analyst Tomer Raanan point out some key trends to keep an eye on in the year ahead. They explain how the shadow fleet is evolving and why an end to Russian sanctions doesn’t necessarily mean an end to the shadow fleet too. Learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here: www.lloydslistintelligence.com/products/…oyds-list

REGIME change in Venezuela, shifting shadow fleets and the small matter of how to decarbonise one of the world’s most critical industries. Who’d be a shipowner in 2026? To kick off the new year, Lloyd’s List is bringing you a series of shorter podcast episodes highlighting key issues to watch out for in each of our key topics, including the tanker, container and dry bulk markets, risk and compliance plus the ongoing decarbonisation saga. But to start with, editor-in-chief Richard Meade and APAC editor Cichen Shen give you a broader, overall picture of the most pressing issues facing shipping. And the list is a long one. Learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here: https://www.lloydslistintelligence.com/products/lloyds-list

This episode is brought to you by Wirana Shipping Until the opening decade of this century, shipowners were among the chief beneficiaries of what was known at the time as ‘relationship banking’. The market was dominated by a handful of British and German banks, who usually just allowed their ship finance teams to get on with it and didn’t ask too many questions. It seemed that there were few problems that couldn’t be sorted out over a three-bottle lunch at a rather expensive restaurant. If the top brass were ever sufficiently impertinent as to ask why leniency had yet again been extended, they were told they simply didn’t understand the cyclical nature of the shipping industry. Then a bunch of derivatives traders came along and spoiled the party. In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 onwards, shipping loans could be bought for just cents on the dollar and bad shipping loans even forced a number of long-established banks to close their doors altogether. Private equity rushed in and, by and large, lost its shirt. To repurpose the earlier euphemism, it simply didn’t understand the cyclical nature of the shipping industry and was never going to wait around long enough to get its money back. While European banks still lend to blue chip shipowners, many smaller and medium-sized owners have turned to Asian, and especially Chinese, leasing companies to source their S&P needs. For a while that worked, especially because the Asian lenders were politically mandated to keep domestic shipyard orderbooks as full as possible. But even that arrangement has been under strain in the last 12 months, thanks to tariff and port fee tensions between Washington and Beijing. So what happens now? If you need to borrow money next year, who is going to lend it to you and how much will you be expected to pay? Joining David on the podcast this week are: Stephen Fewster, global head of shipping finance, ING Bank Pankaj Khanna, chief executive, Heidmar Maritime Holdings Dimitris Karamacheras, partner, Hill Dickinson

This episode of the Lloyd's List Podcast is brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit www.lr.org for more information. LAST week, Lloyd’s List held its Annual Outlook Forum at the beautiful Trinity House in London, sponsored by Lloyd’s Register. Having gathered a baseline of crowdsourced knowledge from Lloyd’s List readers, we invited a star-studded line-up of shipping’s sharpest minds to join us for a discussion of the opportunities and threats that will be shaping shipping next year and beyond. In a year dominated by tariffs, port fees, continuing security concerns in the Red and Black Seas, and the faltering of shipping’s decarbonisation drive, our panel reveal what keeps them awake at night and discuss shipping’s incredible resilience in the face of increasingly challenging conditions. Joining editor-in-chief Richard Meade on this episode are: Cargill Ocean Transportation president, Jan Dieleman Hanwha Ocean Europe chief executive, Claire Wright Lloyd’s Register chief executive, Nick Brown Zodiac Maritime head of regulatory affairs, Katy Ware Sky news economics editor, Ed Conway Download our Key Takeaways document from this event, including our Outlook Survey 2025 results, here: https://info.lloydslistintelligence.com/london-outlook-forum-key-takeaways

PRESIDENT Trump tops this year’s Top 100 People list and ranks as the most influential person in the shipping industry. But why? Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief Richard Meade and deputy editor Linton Nightingale discuss why there was only ever one decision to be made for the top spot and point out some other high-profile entries in this year’s rankings. The full list is available to subscribers via the link below: https://www.lloydslist.com/one-hundred-edition-sixteen Subscribe to Lloyd’s List here or learn more about Lloyd’s List Intelligence here.

In this candid podcast, Bureau Veritas Marine and Offshore’s cyber security technical leader Panagiotis Anastasiou outlines his concerns about what he views as shipping’s limited approach to cyber security and a need for increased awareness of its importance. His career-long knowledge and experience of cyber security arrangements in the aerospace sector — particularly with satellite technology — gives him an authoritative overview of cyber security and, for an industry that has autonomous vessels in development, he had expected to find shipping to be very advanced in its cyber security implementation and attitudes. Instead, he found that was not the case. His remarks include an example of a recent incident in which a service provider’s systems were compromised, affecting at least 120 ships. The breach was subsequently repaired but the full story prompts Anastasiou to observe that “we fall in the same hole again and again”. He says this is because of limited efforts to prepare for cyber security difficulties. In contrast to shipping’s approach, cyber security is the starting point when satellite systems are designed, he says. Controls, procedures and governance are built on that foundation, with ground infrastructure and component design following on. This approach should be common to all industries, including marine, he says. He acknowledges that maritime regulations now apply to cyber security which make it mandatory to take precautions, but he believes that shipowners and their system suppliers should go further. Attitudes must change So, he explains in the podcast that attitudes must change and he outlines some ideas about how cyber security awareness could be strengthened by better – and repeated – education and cyber drills that are backed up by companies’ tested policies on how to respond to cyber security incidents. He goes on to describe how a cyber attack on a vessel might be triggered by an attack on shoreside systems, given the growing connectivity between ship and shore and vice versa. Not only that, but the implications of a maritime cyber attack can extend far beyond the company itself, since any resulting operational delay could have an impact on an entire supply chain. Class societies have addressed cyber security concerns by developing two Unified Requirements — UR 26 and UR 27 — and Anastasiou was a member of the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) Cyber Systems Panel that developed them. But he suggests in the podcast that these should be viewed as starting points for class societies to evolve requirements to match the pace of change in technology. As a response to his remarks, he encourages listeners to conduct internal assessments of their own cyber security and to reach out to their class societies for guidance to improve their resilience.