The progression of the pandemic and cyber-attacks are two of the key threats that could put a pause on any recovery to the container shipping market and disrupted supply chains. “In the happy scenario, with no additional shocks to the system, we could hope for a reversal towards normal operations towards the end of the year, and hope for a normalization of freight rates halfway through 2023,” Vespucci Maritime chief executive Lars Jensen said in a webinar.

But he warned that shippers should not make plans based around that scenario. “There are two extremely large risks right now,” he said. “One is shutdowns in China because of the coronavirus. You could have Shanghai closed tomorrow and that is very much still on the cards.” The second was the high risks of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “Keep in mind that when Maersk was taken down by a cyber-attack in 2017, that was an attack on Ukraine by Russia,” Mr Jensen said. “Nobody even targeted Maersk; they were purely collateral damage.”

Back then, the market could handle the world’s largest carrier being out of action for a week because there was buffer capacity in the system. “Right now, there is zero buffer capacity,” he said. “Bring down a line or bring down one or two major ports and the mess we have now will look like nothing compared to what could happen.”

For individual shippers there was little to be done to mitigate the risks, however. “There is not a lot you can do right now, except ask yourself, is there any critical data I need where I am dependent on looking up that data from one of my suppliers. You may want to make sure you have an offline version available.” Even if neither of those scenarios played out, any “normalization” of freight rates would be at a level “substantially higher” than in the past and would remain there.

“When people ask when will things return to normal, they tend to mean paying less than $1,000 dollars to send a box to the US west coast,” said Sea-Intelligence vice-president Bjorn Vang Jensen. “The answer is not for a long time. I just don’t see that happening. That mindset needs to die.”

Mr Jensen said that adaptation to the new circumstances was not only possible but necessary. “The very largest importers are poised to make record profits in 2021 despite the operational problems and despite the high freight rates,” he said. “That clearly shows us that if you are really hurting and struggling in the current environment, the harsh message is that you have to look at your business model. How do you make it work under these conditions rather than hope for the market to come back?”