FINDING BRIGHT SPOTS DURING DARK DAYS

摘要

Robbert van Trooijen was fresh from a live CNBC early morning show when Containerisation International encountered him in February. Typical of this energetic, dark haired and no-nonsense shipping executive he wondered if the show's presenters were asking the right questions. "The line of thought is since stock markets are down so surely demand must not be growing, so surely, shipping must be in a ..." and he waved his hand. Maersk's recently named Asia-Pacific chief executive sees it a little differently. "Let's start with the market," he says. "There's a level of pessimism. I wouldn't say that it's not called for. But I will say the view is lacking in granularity. If you look at the market last year, yes, it didn't grow by a lot. Our capacity grew by only a half percentage in 2015. Admittedly demand has been quite flat overall.