As the year gets underway, it’s apposite to take a couple of moments to mull over what may lie ahead in the coming 12 months (well, 11.5 months now, but you get the idea).
The IMO Secretary General, Arsenio Dominguez, recently set out the IMO’s 2025 priorities which boil down to seafarers, security and decarbonisation.
Seafarers & security
Seafarers and security go hand-in-hand these days with the innocent crew of the Galaxy Leader apparently still in captivity and being held hostage by Houthi forces in Yemen. The security situation in the Red Sea deteriorated greatly after the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel in October 2023 and the retaliatory military action by Israel. The Houthi terrorist group subsequently declared its support for Hamas and began attacking shipping.
In his final address from the Oval Office on 15 January 2025, US President Joe Biden announced a ceasefire and hostage-exchange deal between Israel and Hamas — a truce that the US Defense Department officials believe signals a possible end to 15 months of conflict in the region. The White House statement added that the US Department of Defense remains focused on a range of Middle Eastern security issues, including maritime security in the Red Sea, where Houthi rebels threaten commercial shipping with Iranian-supplied drones and ballistic missiles.
Following the ceasefire news, ocean shipping interests have described the news as a step in the right direction. Whether this actually leads to the return of peace in the Red Sea, and whether the global carriers will resume that route – with several carriers saying they don’t see an immediate return – remains to be seen. As ever, only time will tell.
Trump’s beautiful bigly tariffs, believe me, it’s a lot of money! Billions and billions of dollars! Great!
Before we move on to de-carbonisation, given that we have mentioned US Presidents, it is appropriate to note that, in about three days, President Biden leaves office and former President Trump returns to office having won the 2024 election. In office, President Trump has vowed to introduce a range of tariffs on imported goods.
On the campaign trail, President Trump famously declared that “the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. It’s my favorite“. Tariffs, a tax or a levy on imported goods, in theory push up the price of the goods upon which the tax is levied which potentially makes those goods less attractive as purchases when compared to goods that don’t have a tariff imposed – and those are typically domestically manufactured goods. Tariffs might generate tax revenue for the imposing government… and they might also induce retaliatory policies, a reshuffling of international trade (maybe producers are swapped around, maybe major manufacturers change their supply lines). It’s likely that importers and shippers will attempt to find ways to work around the tariffs (if any) – maybe through burden-shifting via contract negotiations, maybe through sourcing components from other countries (that are subject to lower rates), maybe through sourcing supplies benefiting from free trade agreements or trade preference programmes… who knows what will happen? Nobody really, we will have to wait and see.
Reams of academic analysis of the proposed Trump Tariffs can be found here.
Taking out the carbon
Excitement in recent years has focused on methanol. However, ammonia as a marine fuel took a big step forward late last year. Ammonia received a massive metaphorical shot in the metaphorical arm last year with the pilot demonstration of successful ship-to-ship ammonia transfer at anchorage in the Pilbara, Australia. “This pilot … marks a step towards operationalising a low-GHG emission shipping route for international iron ore trade, which is projected to require 1 to 1.5 million tonnes of ammonia by 2035, according to a joint 2023 study undertaken by Pilbara Ports, Yara Clean Ammonia and Lloyd’s Register,” the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation of Singapore said in a statement. The Centre has added that it will be using the knowledge gain to asses the feasibility of ammonia transferring elsewhere. Meanwhile, in China, COSCO Shipping has reported that a successful truck-to-ship ammonia bunkering of a tugboat took place in Dalian in December. Meanwhile, a round go funding from the the government of Norway will see the equivalent of USD$68 to go toward several ammonia-fuelled transport projects.
A big ammonia boom took place at the IMO in early December when the shipping regulator approved interim guidelines for the use of ammonia fuel onboard vessels. Changes to the IGC Code (The International Code of the Construction and Equipment of Ships Carrying Liquefied Gases in Bulk) are scheduled for mid-next year too, which will likely boost the take up of ammonia.
Robot ships
Autonomous shipping will continue to be developed throughout the year even though a non-mandatory MASS (maritime autonomous surface ship) code that was due to be released in May 2025 has been pushed back to May 2026. Still, it is expected that the IMO will continue to address autonomous shipping issues over the course of the year. Countries and companies around the world continue to be involved in robot ships and projects like Yara Birkeland and the EU AUTOSHIP are expected to expand activities over the course of the year.
Diseases
Infections, pathogens, disease, and pests continue to remain on everyone’s mind, whether that’s MPox, or the bouts of pneumonia that have made news headlines of late, or, animal illnesses (we know, we know, humans are technically animals too) such as the Foot and Mouth Outbreak in Germany that’s underway at the moment. And that’s before we even start considering such things as insect pests like Khapra Beetle, Fall Armyworm and Asian Gypsy Moth, or yellow-fever bearing mosquitos – which was recently discovered in a pest-control trap near Melbourne! Makes us itchy just thinking about it. Time to break out the bug-spray.
Incidentally, Derek from YouTube Science channel Veritasium did a good video on why mozzies seem to find the blood of some people particularly tasty. It’s all to do with your genetics. You’ve to to feel sorry for poor Derek when he puts his arm into a Y-shaped tube full of mosquitos and they all made a beeline (a mosquito-line?) directly for his arm. You can see that the mozzies were going berserk to try and bite him!
Australian industrial relations crisis
It’s very likely that there’s going to be an Australian industrial relations crisis in 2025. “Yeah, and what else is new,” you might cynically and deservedly think. The ongoing industrial relations campaign against Australian life and Australians continues to be waged by the unions. We can think of three just off the top of our heads – the recent campaign against Qube, the current campaign by the train union against Sydneysiders, and there’s a campaign against a towage operator in Queensland.
But looking forward, this year, well, it looks bad. There are five main container stevedores in Australia, of which two have massive market shares and are capable of handling the biggest ships and cargo flows. Of those five, four are due to have an EBA expire this year. If history is any guide, we can likely expect ongoing rolling strikes at the main container terminals around Australia. As is usually, there will be talk of sub-contracting and the like, but the truth is that (a) there is hardly anyone to sub-contract too and (b) the disrupted volumes are, or will be, just so huge that the terminal operator that isn’t subject to industrial action simply won’t be able to handle more than a fraction of the disrupted trade.
So, if history is anything to go by, then – sooner or later – we can expect ship queues (these tend to be invisible by the way in the sense that you won’t have large numbers of ships visibly hanging around off shore), berth and cargo congestion, snarl-ups and disruption on the landside, wasted costs everywhere, port omissions, blankings, voyage cancellations, schedule re-arrangements, and costs costs costs everywhere you look.
So folks, better stop eating table salt, start up your exercise programme, take up yoga, start meditating, and get your self to the doctor to get some pills in advance.
Why? because this year your blood pressure is going to be put under pressure.
And, on that note, have a Happy 2025 everybody!
