News / Cash-rich liners better equipped to face a market downturn next year

Olif Wilzig

Containership market fundamentals for 2026 are not looking optimistic, according to speakers at the Marine Money Asia conference in Singapore yesterday.

X-Press Feeders’ finance chief, Ofir Wilzig (above), said that while 2025 had been “generally good”, 2026 looked less bright.

He said: “Overcapacity is there, along with the risk of US tariffs causing lower consumer demand, and [there are also] the negative effects of geopolitical events on consumer demand. The outlook is discouraging. We are preparing for a downturn.”

Pierre Carassus, head of maritime industries for Asia-Pacific at Societe Generale, which counts containership owners among its biggest customers, also expects trade growth to slow next year.

However, he confirmed that the bank would continue lending to shipping, in both up- and down-cycles.

He said: “The first line of defence when you lend money is to see the creditworthiness of your counterparty. The reality is that when we look across the board right now, not only at the liner majors, but also smaller players, we see they are very healthy and ready to weather potentially bad days.”

Mr Carassus added that the liner operators having amassed cash reserves from the Covid-fuelled boom, they were better equipped to cope with any downturns in 2026, compared with any in the past.

He also noted that the container liner shipping industry was ‘dominated by a few operators’ and “can better manage a challenging business environment”.

He added: “Therefore, if bad days come, and they will ,probably come, it will be less a question of survival and more about discipline in those conditions, which is another mitigating factor.”