ATTEND any reception in Athens this week and you wouldn’t think anyone in shipping was worried. 

The exhibition halls were packed, the parties overflowing and the industry’s full spectrum of stakeholders on display. Yet in quieter corners, over coffees and side conversations, concern was unmistakable.

Markets are strong — ask any tanker owner — but the undercurrent of caution ran deep. The ordering spree that reliably follows elevated rates is well underway, and several prominent owners voiced fears of future overcapacity.

Safe Bulkers chief executive Polys Hajioannou said the quiet part out loud.

The surge in newbuildings and the rise of fresh shipyards, especially in China, is his biggest worry.

“It reminds me a little bit of 2007/2008,” he told Lloyd’s List. “If new shipyards start appearing in the market, this might not be a good sign.”

Even so, Hajioannou remains bullish on dry bulk for the next six months and sees Posidonia as an ideal moment for Greek owners to renew their fleets — “sell their ships and order the new ones”.

That is shipping’s perennial dilemma: overcapacity means too much tonnage chasing too few cargoes. Owners justify new orders with valid arguments — ageing fleets, efficiency needs, carbon taxes, high bunker prices — but the cumulative effect is a swelling global fleet with little scrapping to offset it.

With rates where they are, demolition is muted. Braemar expects 20 to 25-year-old vessels to keep finding work as long as sentiment holds. Some hope sanctions relief for Russia and Iran will clear out the shadow fleet, but Braemar believes those ships will keep trading for another year or two. The broker still expects a “purge” of older tonnage soon enough to restore profitability for a renewed fleet.

Anti-NZF coalition comes out on the front foot

There was one side of the decarbonisation debate making all the noise in Athens, and it wasn’t the green corner.

Maria Angelicoussis’ coalition against the International Maritime Organization Net-Zero Framework was out in force from the first minute at Monday’s Capital Link.

Dynacom’s George Prokopiou went so far as to accuse IMO secretary-general Arsenio Dominguez of wanting to become “the biggest banker in the world”, referring to the hated proposal to establish a worldwide IMO Net-Zero Fund for decarbonisation.

Maria Angelicoussis agreed and called for pragmatism. “What came out last year would have been extremely bad for shipping,” she told Capital Link.

Ahmed Ali Alsubaey, chief executive of Bahri, said he had signed up for the Angelicoussis position last year.

It wasn’t just shipowners coming out against the NZF either. Speaking at an event organised by the Hellenic Ports Association, Greece’s deputy minister of shipping, Stefanos Gkikas, said his country was “fully committed to promoting the green transition”.

But that transition should not be made at the expense of Greek shipping, he said, to considerable applause.

“This is our national position, and certainly shortly it will become a European one as well.”

The point was made loud and clear, perhaps because the battle is far from over. Several shipowners said the NZF could still be adopted at MEPC as is.

Far less airtime was given to the risk that Angelicoussis succeeds in killing the NZF, and that Brussels then follows through with its threat to let regional regulation rip — a scenario that, we reported, would hit smaller shipowners harder than the majors.

The AI wave reaches shipping

This week was the week the AI buzz hit shipping. Almost every stand, every seminar and every speech mentioned artificial intelligence in some guise, but there is confusion about how the technology will impact shipping.

Diana Shipping chief executive Semiramis Paliou called it the “elephant in the room” and said it would change shipping more in the next five years than geopolitics or decarbonisation.

But many warned the technology would only be truly revolutionary if shipping does its homework and prepares adequately.

One of the biggest risks highlighted was “shadow AI”, which isn’t the latest deceptive shipping practice identified by Lloyd’s List Intelligence, but instead the use of unsanctioned AI tools by crews or office staff.

A wrong upload could lead to a significant data leak. Putting faith in the wrong large language model could lead to the wrong conclusion, costing thousands.

We asked several maritime leaders this week whether shipping understood AI. Lloyd’s Register chief growth officer, Andy McKeran, was not alone in his emphatic response of “no”.

“I think there's a huge education opportunity,” he said, pointing out that his organisation could play a role in “convening people to be able to discuss this in an open forum and ask those silly questions, which you have to do”.

Crewing the future: shortage and skills gap

Behind the packed halls and late-night parties lies the reality that shipping only functions thanks to the crews working at sea. Many conversations turned to the Strait of Hormuz, where managers described seafarers under severe strain aboard vessels trapped in the Middle East Gulf for more than three months.

That is the immediate crisis. The longer-term one is shortage. Every major report reaches the same conclusion: at current fleet growth rates, shipping will run out of seafarers.

Events like those in the MEG do little to attract new recruits. Industry leaders acknowledged they must do more to show crews they are supported and valued.

Capability is the other looming challenge. New technologies and fuels will require extensive training — without cutting into rest hours, BIMCO’s Crewing the Future session heard. But early movers who invest in training risk seeing their best people poached by owners who wait on the sidelines.

Calls for unified regulation were loud. The IMO is updating the STCW Convention, but Wista president Elpi Petraki warned it will likely be outdated by the time it is published.

Posidonia delivers — but the horizon is clouded

Posidonia once again delivered what it promises: a celebration of shipping’s scale, energy and resilience. The industry continues to navigate crisis after crisis with remarkable steadiness.

But beneath the festivities lie deeper structural challenges — overcapacity, regulatory fragmentation, technological disruption and a looming crewing crunch — problems that shipping may not be able to trade its way out of or profit from.