Freight market volatility in many markets over the past two years has been extreme enough to induce a heart attack. Yet major Greek owner George Procopiou has suggested it was even worse.
When a moderator at Maritime Cyprus Conference 2022 suggested that shipping earnings have been as volatile as a cardiogram, Procopiou jumped in to correct him.
“It wasn’t a cardiogram — it was a dead man’s graph. And suddenly it [shipping] resurrected!” the principal of Dynacom Tankers and Dynagas said, eliciting cheers from industry figures gathered in Limassol.
“Definitely, shipping isn’t for the fainthearted,” Procopiou went on, reflecting on the extreme swings seen across the board in recent years.
“It started with dry cargo, then with containers and recently with tankers,” he said. Seasonal fluctuations are a fact of life in LNG carriers, but probably not in the range of $20,000 in the summer of last year to $400,000 recently, he added.
“How can we survive?” Procopiou rhetorically asked.
“We can survive by making a name of being reliable counterparties and providing immaculate service, to have very competitive running costs without going against safety and maintenance, to have a very strong stomach and to wait and to wait.”
Banks are a key part of that waiting, Procopiou added.
Receiving a $1m loan in a moment of crisis is like getting $50m in normal times, the Greek owner said, ushering into an unusually emotional outburst of gratitude to lenders, that seemed almost tinged with personal experience.
Banks — smaller Greek and Cypriot lenders in particular — “stayed by our side in a difficult moment” because they knew the particularities of shipping, Procopiou said.
The Greek clarified later in his speech that he expressed this gratitude on behalf of all shipowners attending the biennial event in Limassol.
