Widdows: It’s hard to see a way forward for Hanjin

Ron Widdows, the former chief executive officer of both Neptune Orient Lines and Rickmers Holding, told American Shipper he thought Hanjin Shipping handled its financial collapse “pretty badly.”    Ron Widdows, the former chief executive officer of both Neptune Orient Lines and Rickmers Holding, said he finds it difficult to see a way that Hanjin Shipping will be able to remain a carrier.
   In an interview last week with American Shipper, Widdows said that he thought Hanjin had handled its financial collapse “pretty badly.”
   “They caught not only the industry but their customers completely by surprise,” he said. “If you ever had any intention of having your company survive, you wouldn’t do it this way certainly.”
   Widdows also said he did not know Hanjin Shipping’s future plans, but said that “given the pain and suffering that they’ve inflicted on the people that were their customers, it’s kind of hard to imagine how you would patch that up going forward.”
   However, he noted that liner shipping is “an industry that is largely driven on price. If your price is low enough, I guess people will use you no matter what. But this is pretty close to, there is no way back. The chaos that has resulted is pretty shocking.”
   Meanwhile, Yonhap News Agency reported Hanjin said Thursday that it has secured a 60 billion won (US $54.6 million) loan from Korean Air Lines, its largest shareholder, to resolve unpaid fees for chartered ships and help its stranded containerships unload cargo.
   Yonhap noted that in addition to the money from the airline, Hanjin Shipping has received 50 billion won from the Korea Development Bank and 40 billion won from Cho Yang-ho, the chairman of Hanjin Group.
   Now the head of his own company, Ronald D. Widdows & Associates, Widdows said the problems at Hanjin were all the more surprising and “they were in a lot of ways a pretty well managed company.”
   He noted that many chartered ships will be returned to chartering companies, both public companies such as Danaos and Seaspan, as well as German shipowners.
   Those assets “will probably be re-employed, and that is part of the problem in the industry – the ships never go away.”
   While there may be a “temporary stiffening of rates, you still have a lot of capacity coming,” Widdows said, adding that “the dynamics don’t fundamentally change just because one guy’s not there, unfortunately.”