As it prepares to welcome the world in another frantic week of networking and partying at Posidonia, Greek shipping is right to be proud about its achievements and position.
Greeks have defended and expanded their lead as the world’s top shipowning nation. Over the past four years, they have grown their fleet at twice the pace of the global industry's. That trend is set to continue, to judge by Greeks newbuilding orders, which accounted for about 14% of the total world tonnage under construction at the end of 2017.
The fact that Greeks are currently heading no less than four international shipping organisations and associations underlines their relative weight and the clout they carry.
Yet for all its success and ability to look into the future, anticipate developments, evolve and prosper, there remains something oddly backward-looking in the way Greek shipowning views itself.
One case in point is the perennially intoned mantra from owners and officials about reinvigorating the country’s seafaring traditions and drawing thousands of Greek youths back to the seas.
This seems more like paying lip service to a past that will never come back, than any realistic prospect or strategy. True, the number of Greek seafarers climbed to multi-year highs over the past couple of years, partly because of the economic crisis that has been ravaging Greece’s onshore economy.
However, their numbers remain just a fraction of the tens of thousands sailing the oceans back in the 1980s.
No matter how accommodating modern vessels are compared with the past and no matter how high youth unemployment is, Greek shipping will have to live with the fact that the vast majority of the country’s youngsters have become city slickers, loath to live for long periods outside the urban settings to which they have become accustomed.
Another example is the industry’s attitude concerning longer-term trends in shipping such as decarbonisation and automation.
Greek shipping officials have been portraying themselves as the coolheaded voice of reason, whose job it is to pour cold water on what they consider as naive, or self-interested, initiatives from other nations to slash emissions or promote alternative propulsion and bunkering systems.
Greeks’ “in-depth knowledge and experience… gives us the right to defend against policies that ignore the true facts and the conditions required for the efficient and sustainable operation of shipping”, the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS) said in its annual report, published last week just in time for Posidonia.
Solutions not problems
The UGS and other Greek owners are often right to shoot down unrealistic proposals or ideas concocted in the minds of engineers, politicians, activists or even journalists. What they have been less adept at, however, is convincing the world they too are actually looking for solutions instead of being nay-sayers.
The irony is that Greek shipping itself has rapidly evolved to resemble the wider world around it, in ways that many of its representatives are not sure they should be publicly welcoming.
In a globalised world, Greek shipping is not what it was 30, 40 or 50 years ago — it has evolved, just as the Italian fashion industry, the German Mittelstand manufacturers and the US technology companies have had to over the centuries.
Greek shipping should feel more relaxed about what it has become: an onshore, office-based corporate habitat that benefits from global supply chains to spot growth opportunities, labour and capital around the world
Far from being a sign of Greek shipping degenerating or losing its soul, it is a measure of its success that it more heavily relies nowadays on a few managers taking decisions in corporate boardrooms, rather than on plucky captain-owners’ thinking on their feet from ships' bridges in the middle of the ocean.
If it wants to draw on home-grown shipping talent, Greek shipping may be well advised to look for software developers, engineers and finance experts just as hard as it says it is looking for captains and sailors.
Greek shipping should feel relaxed about what it has become: an onshore, office-based corporate habitat that benefits from global supply chains to spot growth opportunities, labour and capital around the world. This is cause to celebrate — not to grieve over traditions lost from bygone ages.
