The Lloyd’s List Podcast: Our outlook from Asia

This podcast is part of a special mini-series gathering the collected views of the international Lloyd’s List editorial team on what stories are going to be shaping the shipping markets in the coming months. Today’s edition features the Asia team talking about bunkering, LNG, trade tariffs and digitalisation. In this edition it was the turn of our Asia team to lead the agenda. Hwee Hwee Tan, our senior reporter based in Singapore is fully focussed on bunkering right now. Given the looming regulatory shift, Singapore is abuzz with sulphur stories right now, but in between 2020 coverage Hwee Hwee is looking much more seriously at the prospects for increased LNG bunkering in Asia. Cichen Shen, our China Editor, is based in Hong Kong but is in and out of the mainland more regularly than a Shanghai feeder operation. The US-China trade war is inevitably keeping him fully focussed on trade stories right now and his basic conclusion is that shipping should expect political complexities to be the new normal – a warning that implies planning for shipping operations is going to become a lot more difficult than anyone anticipated. On a more optimistic note he also sees opportunities emerging on the trade finance side where some ports have been taking advantage of data insights to find new value to offer the market. Vincent Wee, our Hong Kong-based News Editor argues that it is digitalisation driving so many of the stories that we’re covering right now and that’s true across all sectors. Given that Asia is leading in much of the technology development and adoption, he’s well positioned to offer a view on where the opportunities and threats lie. Don’t forget, you can now subscribe to the Lloyd’s List Podcast via iTunes and Spotify, as well as most other podcast providers. And make sure you are registered for a free account on Lloydslist.com so you can receive our Daily Briefing e-mail.