Six months ago, AP Møller-Maersk warned it could sink into the red this year; now the world’s second-largest container shipping line reckons operating profit could be as much as $6.5bn. Last month, rival Hapag-Lloyd of Germany said that it, too, expected to avoid what formerly looked like a looming loss. This is a sector that knows all about being buffeted by shifting currents, be they global or more parochial in origin.

Right now, disruptions at sea and bottlenecks on land are pushing rates well above the industry’s Plimsoll line. The cost of shipping a 40-foot shipping container, based on spot rates, hit $4,526 last week, twice the price a year earlier, according to the Drewry World Container Index. Bad for those paying to ship stuff, but helpful for the ship owners’ bottom lines.

This bump is unlikely to last. Already, shipping companies had taken advantage of the windfall from the fact they could charge higher rates in the period following Covid-19 to order more vessels. Disruptions from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have also given rise to a spending spree.

The upshot is that the current order book is bigger than ever before, equivalent to more than 40 per cent of the current fleet according to Kuehne Nagel, quoting data from Linerlytica. Next year will see delivery of 4.9mn twenty-foot containers’ worth of capacity, according to Drewry.