2021 is the year of recovery. Whilst the IMF and other economic forecasters acknowledge the risks posed by a virulent second wave of the pandemic, they have revised up their expectations of global GDP growth: strong consumer demand, the promise of policy support, and the availability of vaccines are all sources of optimism.
2020 was a remarkable year for the shipping industry in terms of climate action. In January we achieved a seven-fold reduction in sulfur emissions with IMO 2020. It was also the year of the ground-breaking Poseidon Principles. The pace of change will only accelerate in 2021 - this will be the year when decarbonization takes centre stage.
The new US President sees climate change as the No. 1 issue facing humanity. This has also become the top priority for the shipping industry. Marsoft’s analysis reflects that. Marsoft has embraced this imperative and has invested heavily in supporting our clients with the decarbonization challenge.
We worked closely with Poseidon Principles signatories as they filed their 2019 portfolio climate alignment. Our Managing Decarbonization (MD) membership program will transform the shipping industry’s approach to reducing emissions through a large scale, cost-effective, industry-wide approach that will quickly deliver substantial reductions in emissions. Climate action has become a cycle driver and we expect the dynamics of the shipping market to change as a result: stricter regulation, retrofitting and behavioral change will all affect vessel earnings and values. Our risk management platform, FLAGSHIP, will account for these factors in the forthcoming February release.
The pandemic created extraordinary distortions in the shipping markets. Witness last year’s spike in tanker rates as well as the explosion in the liner and containership markets since November. Soaring LNG tanker spot rates have now started to cool off and our outlook expects the shipping markets generally to ease from their recent extremes.
We will talk about these dramatic developments in our February release. The extraordinary changes in containership trade as in the oil markets dominated the markets’ performance in 2020. 2021 will be different.
Marsoft Q1 21 Release ETA 26th February 2021
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