This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ OceanWaves event on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: What does congestion really mean for global trade?
DETAILS: FreightWaves Executive Publisher Kevin Hill and Lars Jensen discuss how port congestion is impacting trade, what they expect this holiday season and when the congestion and shipping delays will start to subside.
SPEAKER: Jensen is the CEO at Vespucci Maritime.
BIO: Jensen has 20 years of experience from inside the container shipping industry, including the last 10 years as an independent analyst and consultant for carriers, shippers, ports and maritime technology firms.
He wrote the book “Liner Shipping 2025,” which focuses on the changes to come in the industry and how carriers, terminals, ports, shippers and forwarders should navigate these changes to emerge successfully.
KEY QUOTES FROM JENSEN:
“It’s not a matter of [playing] the blame game and finding out who is the one party responsible for this and needs to shape up. It’s more a matter of every single node in this long chain being challenged. And addressing each individual single node is not going to lead to any rapid resolution of the fundamental problems.”
“The number of ships is perfectly fine. We don’t have a shortage of ships. The problem is they are lying idle outside of ports twiddling their thumbs and they can’t move cargo. As long as that’s the case, we don’t have enough ships.”
“The reverberations here are not done by a long shot, and I can easily see a scenario where it’s going to get worse in the coming months. … If I’m optimistic, you’re looking six months into the future because there are still a lot of challenges ahead.”
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