Work Boat World editorial – March 2012

At the time of going to press the ever popular but probably overrated Baltic Dry Index was plumbing new lows. The Chinese State Shipbuilding Corporation predicted that fifty percent of China’s ship builders would be bankrupt by 2014. The news was bad to very bad on a number of fronts.

Predictably, of course, the braver contrarians among the “asset play” set are dipping their toes in the water after being mostly out of the market since late 2007.

There are sectors, obviously, that are continuing to thrive such as offshore service, tugs and barges, LNG and lots of the Ro-Ro market. Others, such as fishing, fast ferries and more recently warships are so far down the drain hole as to have all but disappeared.

The latter sectors really only have one way to go and that, eventually, will be up. The big problem with that is determining when “eventually” will be.

There is much to think about. Even the recent tragic grounding of the Carnival ship ‘Costa Concordia’ has made the “bigger is better” crowd at least contemplate their navels. The travails of the ‘Vale Brasil’ did likewise to the big dry bulk people.

As always, we live in interesting times. Our Chinese friends who originated the ancient verse, “may you live in interesting times”, are well aware of that. Even more interesting, we have now entered The Year of the Dragon. A very positive and propitious period, the Chinese soothsayers tell us. I tend to agree with them. As a natural contrarian (some may say “naturally contrary”!), I suspect we may be getting close to the bottom in a number of sectors.

Kung Hei Fa Choi!

Neil Baird

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