News / Winners and losers in a year of unpredictability – but there was 'magic'

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A clear trend of carriers, both air and ocean, being the ‘financial winners’ of 2024 was highlighted on The Loadstar Podcast, with out-of-pocket shippers dubbed the ‘losers’. 

Chief analyst at Xeneta Peter Sand told The Loadstar Podcast: “One clear, outright financial winner, is the performance of [ocean] carriers. 

“They went from a disastrous outlook with loss-making freight rates to a dream outlook with all the problems and subsequent massively high freight rates,” he explained.  

Mr Sand singled MSC out as a particular winner, following its “power play against former friends, turning them into foes”.  

And podcast host, Mike King added: “Someone described it as a bit like the movie Alien, where the creature devours its human host and, in their description, MSC was definitely the alien.”

They were of course referring to MSC’s relentless hunt for open tonnage and subsequent market dominance this year, affording it the option to ‘go it alone’ with no alliance membership.  

Additionally, Mr Sand cited Hapag-Lloyd’s takeover of HHLA in Hamburg as a “very powerful play”, and Maersk “fighting for a new terminal being set up in the biggest container shipping port in Denmark”. 

“Arguably a winner also, from a power play position,” he said.  

And while Mr Sand highlighted the “true losers” as “shippers, once again paying top dollar for appallingly poor service”, he explained that not all lost out. 

“Happy and fortunate shippers that were capable of locking-in long-term-freight rates one year ago” were also winners this year, he explained. 

However, this was only if contacts were made “with carriers that actually ended up honouring their MQCs [minimum quantity commitments]”, he added.

Indeed, The Loadstar has reported how some carriers refused to honour long-term commitments to increase their exposure to the high-yielding spot market, with the director of the Global Shipper’s Forum, James Hookham, questioning whether contracts “amounted to anything any more”.  

And it’s not only ocean shipping stakeholders that felt the highs and lows of 2024’s unpredictability.  The Loadstar publisher Alex Lennane told The Loadstar Podcast airlines were the ‘winners’ of the year in airfreight. 

“All of them, even if they don’t carry e-commerce,” she said, explaining that “the yields have basically been higher for everyone”. 

Ms Lennane added that the losers were “those shippers that may have expected lower rates this year because there wasn’t so much demand in other cargo”.   

But despite there being winners and losers from high freight rates and ‘black swan’ events, Mr Sand pointed to “the magic” which “came about to solve the chaos”, and highlighted the challenging but rewarding job undertaken by logistics professionals this year. 

“Coming from the Red Sea disruption, we saw goods moved, we saw actions taken and we saw manufactured goods ending up in the right places… we didn’t see empty shelves across the main consuming regions.”  

However, looking to next year, Mr Sand predicted that the American consumer would ultimately be a loser, due to president-elect Donald Trump’s threat to implement heavy import tariffs.  

“Starting a trade war with the rest of the world is harmful to them from any perspective. Inflation, quality of goods, selection to choose from… You should embrace global trade, not fight it,” he concluded.