April 2010

Domestic Issues

You will I know be interested to know about Ian Bouskill’s progress.  He is still absent from the office though contributing as best he can from home.  His health is slightly better but a whole procession of “investigations” continue while the doctors assess precisely what treatment (surgery, drugs etc) would be most appropriate/effective. 

Meanwhile Jennifer soldiers on manfully (womanfully!) but is contemplating retirement later this year.  She is doing a stupendous job meanwhile.  This means that I have in consultation with our Membership to make some clear decisions over the next months about the future and the running of IMIF.

It has been strongly put to me that the relevance of IMIF has never, even from its conception, been more relevant.  All branches of the maritime industry are facing extreme problems and there is crucial need that clear thinking and avoidance of individual sectional interests should be maintained.  What IMIF tries to do is to bring all participants together in a unique international, interdenominational “neutral” fashion.

I am personally convinced that IMIF should continue long after my own disappearance from the scene.  It is not that I am contemplating rushing away but I have suddenly realised that perhaps I am not immortal and the time has arrived when I should create a leadership that will be ready and established for the longer future.  After all I have now been Chairman for 29 years.  My lack of succession planning is lamentable.

Our problem remains that of funding yet we manage to carry on on our annual income of just over £70,000.  This leaves no margin for eg travel, which was a regular feature in the past, and when undertaken nowadays has to be paid from my own pocket.

It has been suggested that IMIF should approach our members, particularly the large companies, to try and institute a fund to put IMIF on a firmer financial footing.  After all our costs and membership fees are a small fraction of those of other estimable, though very different organisations.

The argument in this difficult world will be that if you value IMIF and its efforts some increased financial support is required.

Thus over the next months I shall be reconvening a small “Steering Committee” to assist me in the forward planning.

The Market

We are all well aware of the fragile nature of the market.

Oversupply reigns and with only occasional ‘blips’ freight rates are low.  Container Lines are slow-steaming and laying up.  The dry bulk trade responds largely to the varying demands of China and at best rates are way below the dizzying heights of 2008.  Tankers are doing better than the bulkers but, once again, the supply/demand situation is delicately balanced and looks likely to worsen.

I was somewhat surprised to read a statement by Germanischer Lloyd that “now should be a good moment to place orders for new eco-designed container ships.”  The theory was based on a prediction that the reduced fuel costs obtained by the new ships could result in a saving of $29 million over 25 years: this against a background of massive oversupply, lay-ups, slow steaming etc etc seems to me hardly a mouth-watering scheme!

It is depressing to me to read that the newly elected chairman of the European Shippers’ Council Transport Committee (no less) Michelin’s Jean Louis Cambon is complaining already that slow steaming is threatening customer relations and supply lines.  This antediluvian thinking completely ignores the desirability of “Big, fat and slow” ie utilising ships as a pipeline rather than as projectiles requiring maximum speed.  The many merits of such a system – including convenient temporary warehousing coupled with a ‘just in time’ system - seem to have yet again by-passed shippers’ ‘thinking’.

Jim Davis