The Mecca Pact meets the Hellenic triangle, and both want Cairo
The Mecca Pact gave the Sunni bloc a treaty. Across the water, Greece, Israel and Cyprus already run one of their own. Egypt sits between them, and NATO underwrites neither
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GeoTrends Team
“Grace 1” tanker: the vessel that entered the grey zone
The “Grace 1” tanker did not simply trigger a diplomatic crisis in 2019. It exposed sanctions warfare, dark AIS signals and shadow shipping, while the same vessel kept proving the point long afterward
Beibu Gulf Port buys its way into a liner company, weeks before the canal opens
China’s securities regulator has cleared a modest equity deal between a Guangxi port operator and a Zhejiang liner company. The timing, rather than the money, deserves attention
Europe’s first non-Chinese renminbi clearing bank arrives in Frankfurt, and the dollar still sets the limits
One sentence from Beijing on 10 August, and Deutsche Bank became a yuan clearing bank in Frankfurt. Most of the reporting that followed managed to misidentify the counterparty, the precedent and the point
COSCO’s Piraeus decade: a success story entering a different geopolitical age
Ten years after COSCO took control of Piraeus, the port stands transformed — but shifting trade routes, tougher EU scrutiny and Mediterranean competition are rewriting the terms of its next decade
The Strait of Hormuz reopens. Africa wants to keep the ships
Three weeks after Trump told the shipping world to start its engines, he declared the Iran deal over. African ports that absorbed the overflow have spent the windfall on infrastructure, not celebrations
Decks and Deals Weekly #48
The period of 29 June–4 July 2026 opened with Iran replacing drones with invoices, closed with France and the UK deploying warships, and delivered a $1.47 billion VLCC orderbook bet in between.
Geopolitics is no longer a risk. It is the environment
Shipping has changed the way it thinks about risk. The 2025–2026 ICS Maritime Barometer documents not a new threat at the top of the rankings, but a new logic altogether
Decks and Deals Weekly #47
The week of 21–28 June 2026 delivered a drone strike on a trapped Evergreen vessel, a 39% VLCC rate collapse, container shipping’s third-largest spike in history, and a ceasefire that kept shooting
The feeder container paradox: why overcapacity has not broken the market
Hundreds of new feeders under construction. Spot rates under pressure. Charter rates holding firm. Orderbooks at record highs. Something does not add up — and the answer has very little to do with shipping economics