2026 18th Annual Capital Link Shipping & Marine Services Forum | Global Trade in a Fractured World

I think that the topic here is around globalization, global fragmentation.

The world trading system seems to be moving from a system of globalization towards something that is more fragmented, more regional.

Recently, a group of the 18 largest shipping countries, the Consultative Shipping Group, released a statement sort of signaling the structural shift, calling for international cooperation to keep shipping free.

They cited the disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine, the rise of the shadow fleet, COVID-19, of course.

drought in Panama and more recently the U.S.-Iran conflict as the primary drivers of this fragmentation.

From your perspective, and I'll start with you, Rene, at the end, is this a temporary period of disruption with companies sort of getting creative but still protecting their established routines, their established routes, or are we witnessing a fundamental and lasting realignment of global trade?

so my young my oldest asked me uh not that long ago about uh sort of the the whole period and all these things and what do we do in shipping i said well if there's one sort of red line since i started in the early 90s in ap muller it is disruption so i really don't think so the early 90s came on the back of the iran iraq war and and and if you go all the way back then um It has sort of always been that.

So no, I think that's just the name of the game.

If you take a step further back, then the UAE tried at the beginning of this conflict to pass a resolution for exactly that.

a couple of very big uh countries that are dependent on this trade as well obviously vetoed that so we we we don't need to predict necessarily what happens right now in the in the in the macro environment but we need to navigate it and so i don't think we can prejudice on on a particular country doing what but but we can't prejudice on the fact that you know, the world should see this and the world should understand that this is not shipping who decides this.

This is the global powers that decides that this shouldn't be a free trade corridor.

My own

country

250 years ago had the great idea to pass a toll in the Baltics.

It would be quite interesting if that toll would be put today for a particular big country that uses that corridor relatively frequently.

So obviously that can't happen and it should never happen.

So I would have liked to see bigger voices, bigger contempt to that dislocation, because it actually makes no sense from an inflationary perspective.

All of us is paying the price for this.

So conflicts aside, the world needs to have lights on and food in their mouth.

And I actually will say the last thing.

I think next year is going to be very difficult because the fertilizers haven't come into the ground as they should.

Prices are only now starting to get up because of what was said brilliantly in a previous panel, that we have been very, very good at managing this, including with the stocks around the world.

That's not there now.

Paul, as a player in the hottest region at the moment for global conflict, do you have a different perspective on this?

I think that...