Maritime Risk International
Container mood down
The mood-music surrounding the container market has deteriorated further in the last three months, resulting in Drewry downgrading
its outlook for world container port throughput for the current year and the rest of the five-year horizon in the Container
Market Annual Review and Forecast 2019/20. Drewry now expects global port throughput to rise by 2.6 per cent in 2019, down
from the previous 3 per cent expectation. One of the major risks is the impact of IMO 2020 on containership supply. There
is still no clear guidance on just how much additional cost it will entail and the recent drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities
muddied the waters when it caused oil prices to spike. Drewry’s current estimate is that operators will next year be faced
with an additional US$11 billion fuel bill related to the switchover to low-sulphur fuel oil.