Who said what at Sea Asia 2017

Opening Sea Asia 2017 Khaw Boon Wan, Singapore’s Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister of Transport, sets the scene in terms of disruption: “The landscape is changing rapidly digitalization is disrupting and transforming the global transport supply chains.”

BW Group and Singapore Maritime Foundation chairman Andreas Sohmen-Pao sees signs of recovery for shipping: “And let us remember cyclical businesses usually go up after going down, already we have seen green shoots of recovery in the dry bulk and container sectors after a prolonged period of weakness.”

Flippos Lemos, president of NS Lemos & Co, on why the future is bright for the private independent shipowner: “Shipping is quite simply not an ideal fit for the broader equity capital market. Other people’s money serves to exacerbate short term investment in the industry.”

Michael Parker, global head of shipping for Citigroup, presenting the other side of the argument: “The few have destroyed the many, and that’s why the private shipowner will struggle to survive.”

DBS Bank ceo Piyush Gupta forecasts a lengthy period of oversupply in offshore marine. “In the next two to three years, the excess supply is not going to get drained out in a hurry.”

“Amazon and Alibaba seem to be taking over the customer relationship aspect from shippers and on our end we need to think about how such changes will impact upon us.” Orient Overseas Container Line ceo Andy Tung mulls partnerships with online retailers.

Rolls-Royce Marine vp for innovation, engineering and technology Oskar Levander predicts a disrupted future for the industry: “Shipping is going to face a big change and it will be disruptive.”

Jarand Rystad, managing partner of Rystad Energy, sees some glimmer of hope for the offshore sector: “We expect offshore projects to see increasing sanctioning going forward in 2017 and furthermore into 2018.”

“Centrally on a ship there is not a lot of that is of true value but if somebody can use that ship as a backdoor into a corporate environment,” Peter Broadhurst, senior vice president safety and security for Inmarsat, on how poor cyber security on vessels can be used to hack corporate networks.