Financing issues have started to tighten the noose in the throats of small and medium-size ship owners, who were already facing problems over the past few years, as more and more traditional banks were exiting the shipping segment. At the present time, the above problems have been aggravated further by a collapsing dry bulk market and an ongoing Euro crisis, said Mr. George Lazaridis, Head of Market Research & Asset Valuations with Allied Shipbroking.

According to Mr. Lazaridis “most of these owners, holders of up to five vessels, have been reduced in number considerably over the past 5 years, pressured by a lack in earnings and tougher conditions and low availability in bank finance since the 2008 onslaught. The problems for this significant group of Greek ship owners have been mentioned over and over again. Most of the traditional banks had already retract-ed much of their lending capacity and on the basis that they would take a more con-servative approach to new loans, most of these lenders chose to focus on a smaller cli-entele of larger more prominent names. What made things even worse was the pilling on of new sources of finance, brought about by the numerous funds which got enticed to enter the market supporting only owners of larger fleets and pushing for them to purchase more modern tonnage as well as newbuilding ordering. Having been left out from this inflow of cash has cost most of the smaller owners dearly, as with the excep-tion of the ones holding cash reserves, the rest were left out of any opportunities to modernise their tonnage during a time were prices reached highly enticing levels. This in turn means that most of these owners have been left with overage units which are put under more pressure in the chartering market”, Lazaridis noted in the shipbroker’s latest weekly report.

He went on to note that “what changed now, is that the current conditions in the dry bulk freight market (a mar-ket where most of these small to medium sized owners are involved in) has been hit hard, squeezing earnings down to a minimal. Under such times, owners which would have liked to be able to refinance their vessels in order to achieve a better position in terms of cash flow, have little choice, while those holding overage units are even pushed towards the difficult decision of selling their only vessel for scrap (noting here that scrap prices have taken a strong tumble recently). At the same time the few which were still able to find some support from the Greek and European banks which were still willing to keep their long relationships with these owners, found themselves under pressure as the current problems tackled in Europe are causing a further cautioning by banks which are afraid of being caught up in further restrictions of available cash as well as losses brought about their exposure in sovereign debt bonds and in general a higher rate of loan defaults. For anyone who has been around for many years in the shipping industry, this is nothing new and during past market collapses there has al-ways been many which have found themselves being pushed out of the market”.

Allied’s analyst added that “this time around though it is vital that we have a continuation of this large group of Greek owners (accounting for over half of Greek shipping companies), as they are the ones which are likely to provide the largest portion of support from shipping to the Greek economy during its time of difficulty, continually providing a stream of earnings into the country through the export of a very competitive service and as such support-ing the countries trade balance. Nevertheless, even with an exit of a number of these owners, it will likely be only a temporary one, as the other end of the cycle usually brings an opposite effect. Greek shipping is going through one of its most testing times and it will show its true worth after managing to make it through the worst crisis seen during the past three decades”, he concluded.