As the battle lines continue to be drawn over exhaust gas cleaning systems on ships Precious Shipping md Khalid Hashim warns that the discharge waste water from open-loop scrubbers “will comeback to haunt us”.

The global dry bulk shipping market is expected to see flat rates and a marginal fleet growth in 2019, with potential near-term positive prospect following a temporary truce in trade war between China and US.

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) will continue to stay under pressure as shipowners are not scrapping enough vessels even as demand has grown, pointing to a slow market recovery up until 2020, warned Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping.

A packed audience of nearly 200 heard strong opinions as to whether or not the maritime industry is ready to embrace smart shipping at a parliamentary-style debate held on the opening day of the Seatrade Maritime Middle East event in Dubai on Monday.

China’s economy and developments there in terms of new patterns of consumption of commodities in particular is having a dramatic impact on the dry bulk market, a panel at the BNP Paribas-Moore Stephens Singapore Shipping Forum 2018 said.

Dry bulk shipowners are not helping their own cause by a failure to scrap vessels, which will lead to an “extremely volatile” market recovery warns Precious Shipping.

Precious Shipping has lost an arbitration over excessive fuel consumption on ultramax bulkers built at Taizhou Sanfu Ship Engineering in China.