This fireside chat recap is from Tuesday, the first day of FreightWaves’ Global Supply Chain Week.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Examining the current landscape of global maritime
DETAILS: A discussion with Gordon Downes, CEO of New York Shipping Exchange, about current trends in ocean shipping.
KEY QUOTES FROM DOWNES:
On the current state of global shipping:
“I think it’s very clear that the market has normalized or is in the process of normalizing. Prices are coming down, close to pre-pandemic levels. The carrier ocean networks are starting to untangle, so the supply chain bottlenecks, which were very prevalent and made headlines during the pandemic, are now largely being removed and we’re seeing normalization in the market.”
On current demand:
“What I think is likely to happen, is we’ll see destocking take place and then companies need to reinstate their purchase orders … and that will probably happen at similar times. We will see somewhat of a bullwhip effect.”
On the recent capacity cuts from ocean carriers:
“We’re seeing carriers starting to rationalize their networks — blank vessels, reduce the number of strings that they are running — because the demand at the moment is suppressed. … There again is another risk of a short-term period where there are bottlenecks, or at least shortages of supply, and that could very well cause freight rates to spike up again.”
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