What comes after normal and new normal?

GreenPort Congress	World Ports Conference	Coastlink Conference

GreenPort Congress is a meeting place for the port community to discuss and learn the latest in sustainable environmental practice. It offers ways to reduce their carbon foot print and be more sensitive to environmental considerations, both of which are vital to future success.	The annual World Ports Conference brings together global port leaders and key stakeholders from the shipping sectors to explore the opportunities and challenges facing the maritime industry. This year’s #IAPH2026 will be held in London, UK, offering a programme of plenary, breakout and workshop sessions and a gala dinner celebrating the IAPH Sustainability Awards.	Coastlink is a neutral pan-European network dedicated to the promotion of short sea and feeder shipping, and the intermodal transport networks through the ports that support the sector. It is a place for industry professionals to meet and discuss future innovation, economic and environmental considerations – and develop partnerships that will help build a sustainable future.
Visit the GPC Website	Visit the WPC Website	Visit the Coastlink Website

We are entering a new world with little clarity of the future as we face either a return to the old ways or live in a state of perma-crisis.

A return to the old normal or the state of perma-crisis with a lack of certainty, profitability and stability?

During the height of the Pandemic, it was popular to discuss the shift from “normal”, i.e., pre-2020 to the “new normal” from 2022 on. There was much hype about the changes that were taking place in the way we work, how we shop and spend.

By late 2018, according to UNCTAD, the global economy was slowing down after peaking in mid=2017. Partly to blame was the tariff war instigated by the Trump Administration, tariff policies and the tensions in stability of international trade that this caused. According to the World Trade Organisation, global trade grew by just 3.8 percent in 2018, down from 5.4 percent in 2017.

Leading up to 2021 ship values and charter rates were low and ports also faced significant regional competition due to overcapacity. At the end of 2019 Moody’s classified Maersk as a lower to medium term investment risk with the rest of the liner industry falling into either the “non-investment grade speculative to highly speculative” investments categories. Profitability was not a factor and the orderbook for ships was depressed. This was the normal pattern in the economics of shipping, short bursts of optimism followed by longer periods of pessimism.

Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic and the new normal behaviour patterns and massive inflow of cash to boost the economies that had come to a virtual standstill. The new normal was born and consumers, flush with unexpected cash, used to working from home, began to spend which resulted in a massive trade boom resulting in port congestion, supply chain distribution failures and, unexpectedly from Quarter 2 2021, massive profitability of containership carriers and vessel owners. This continued into the third quarter 2022 but as world trade begins to tank as a result of inflation, high interest rates and expectations of a global recession, excessively high freight rates have collapsed from their meteoric peaks.

We are now facing the dilemma of a return to the old normal whose only bright side is that the logistics supply chain will finally recover, or perhaps the state of perma-crisis with a lack of certainty, profitability and stability. Either way, nothing to be cheerful about.