BATTING centres are an iconic part of Japan’s baseball-loving culture and found everywhere in the country as entertainment facilities.

For Takaya Soga, the president and chief executive of NYK Line, the past year has felt like being in one of these venues every day, tirelessly swinging at an endless stream of baseballs coming his way.

“So many fast balls are coming,” he says. “[Los Angeles Dodgers player] Shohei Ohtani can hit them, but I can’t.”

But Soga is not stealing time to practice baseball.

The “balls” are a metaphor for a string of surprising events that have had a significant impact on the industries where his company operates — from the war in Ukraine to the Panama Canal drought and then to the Red Sea crisis.

Like most top decision makers in our industry today, he feels his energy is being consumed by dealing with a constant stream of emergencies, with the rest spent puzzling out an increasingly elusive future.

And one of the key questions the shipping veteran faces: is his company, which aims to become a frontrunner in the green transition, betting too much on that path amid all the uncertainties surrounding decarbonisation?