CIFFA Forwarder Magazine

27 THE FORWARDER | WINTER 2025 Lars Jensen is the CEO of Vespucci Maritime and a globally recognized analyst and thought leader in the container shipping industry. With more than 22 years of experience, Lars has been a trusted advisor to carriers, shippers, ports, maritime technology firms, and financial institutions—helping them navigate the complexities of an industry constantly in motion. Before becoming an independent consultant, Lars held senior leadership roles at Maersk, including Chief Analyst, Director of Market Intelligence, and Director of E-Commerce. In his Maritime Analysis Update at the CIFFA Conference, Lars outlined a number of challenges for maritime shipping over the next five years: • Global trade will continue and grow but there is no guarantee individual companies will still be around • The U.S. trade war will have long lasting impact • Constant uncertainty and change (unstable environment in trade, and tariff changes are unpredictable in terms of scope, timing, magnitude and rationale) This all makes it impossible for any shippers to make meaningful supply chain planning for the foreseeable future. The core problem is the uncertainty that is not going to go away. • The Red Sea crisis is approaching the two-year mark. Will a shaky new ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas end the Red Sea crisis? Regional niche operators continue to serve through the risk area. Lars pointed to February, after Chinese New Year, when there is a seasonal slump, for any expected route changes to go through. USTR port fees from both sides are to be suspended one year. Most carriers have said they will not create a specific USTR surcharge. • Collapse of the IMO net zero Framework: Potential adoption discussion postponed 1 year to October 2026. What are the ramifications? There is an increase in national legislation, more complex global conditions, and a reduced willingness to invest in green fuel production facilities. Jensen said that container shipping lines have been relatively progressive on this front but industry overall lags in this area. Global trade in terms of container movement is relatively strong. North American volumes however are plummeting rapidly-shipping lines will as a result deploy their ships where the growth is. Trade wars have changed the minds of a lot of government offices. All efforts on growth, new trade agreements being made at company and national level with all countries around the world except for the U.S. • Reliability: Schedule reliability is not good-improvement has stalled WHY? It goes back to uncertainty in the market that has led to a large degree of volatility. Ports are designed to handle a stable flow. If volumes rise and then fall the next week it creates instability. Volatile nature of demand. Not a lot of optimism that we can see reliability. Spot rates are under pressure. From Asia to Europe, rates are below. Asia to West Coast North America-rates are only marginally above where we were pre-pandemic. • Supply/Demand: Only with speed correction. Will we be facing overcapacity by the end of the decade? Other factors: scrapping will take out massive capacity. • Red Sea Crisis-2027-will be the crux of it, and things will go down after that. Yes, carriers will lose money in the downturn. That is how it works. How will the carriers react? In all the previous price wars, carriers didn’t have a lot of money. There was impetus to lower rates. This time the carriers are sitting on a massive treasure chest post Covid. You could argue it would lead to a price war. But unlike the other times, carriers are not dependent on critical cash flow. They could actually choose to lay off 30 % of their fleet right now to avoid the price wars. What are the 10 largest challenges going forward? We are in a period of fundamental shifts, said Lars. 1) Tariffs and regulations-they are likely here to stay, we will see more and not less-more tactical changes 2) Decarbonization-regional frameworks will appear-just as we have seen the ETS and Fuel EU in Europe-there will be a slowdown of the decarbonization path 3) Geopolitical turmoil: the plan for this to get worse not better-we could be forced to change directions from one day to the next Maritime Analysis