Clean Shipping, Dirty Cruising, and Activist Investing
Plus How VC In Aquaculture Is Starting To Sound A Lot Like Tech
01.14.21
Two weeks in a row! I’m on a roll. Here’s the latest news affecting key industries in the ocean economy.
Shipping
I think this statement summarizing Maersk CEO Soren Skou sums up various industry and national net zero goals and pledges pretty well:
...setting a 2050 target was ‘relatively easy for me as a CEO to do’, as it would be a task for one of his successors to implement. But the 2030 goals could only be achieved with ‘clear progress’ in the next five years so were ‘probably more important’ than the net zero goal.
+Maersk accelerates net zero push in journey to cleaner shipping - FT
Ports
Long lead times and supply bottlenecks in shipping aren’t the only issues in our global supply chain. Once the good hit land, a whole new set of challenges awaits.
As long as the pandemic persists, as long as we are making up for decades of past dis-investment, we are going to see impacts on shipping times and shipping costs
+Buttigieg meets with port leaders in Long Beach, addresses supply chain issues and progress - ABC
+Imports take ‘dramatically longer’ to reach US as bottlenecks bite - FreightWaves
Marine & Coastal Tourism
Nothing fancy here, just a great idea with passionate execution leading to amazing results.
Maybe I don’t need to figure out Web3 after all.
Can you imagine how different the world could look if every private enterprise, if every tourism operation protected some small area of their backyard?
-Marit Miners, Misool Resort & Misool Foundation
+Restoring an island paradise - Economist
But this…
+Cruise Report Card - Friends of the Ocean
As I mentioned last week, this newsletter will not be going easy on the cruise industry.
The original 2017 conviction stemmed from illegal discharge of oil-contaminated water and intentional acts to cover it up. The 2019 conviction was due to interference with court-supervised inspections.
This sounds like the Iranian nuke negotiations!
Start on the Land
Of course, cleaning up these floating petri dishes doesn’t really help much when the pollution is just pouring into the oceans from land.
I’m not sure who is in charge of Water UK’s PR, but this response was the worst corporate communication I’ve read in a while.
We support the committee’s urgent call for action to improve the health of England’s rivers. Now is the time to have an honest conversation about whether the current approach is adequate for addressing the challenges faced by our environment.
Read: “You caught us, now what.”
+MPs attack regulators for turning ‘blind eye’ to sewage pollution - FT
I found this story by following this group on Twitter. Amazing local activism in a space I care deeply about.
Seafood & Aquaculture
While a $7 million investment in an aquaculture project is certainly nothing to sneeze at, what really drew me to this story was the investor themselves - Aqua-Spark.
I first became aware of Aqua-Spark, a venture investment company based in the Netherlands, at last year’s Economist World Ocean Summit.
It was immediately obvious in discussion panels that Aqua-Spark co-founders Amy Novogratz and Mike Velings were people to follow in the aquaculture space.
+Lake Harvest secures $7 million investment - The Fish Site
Familiar venture capital names in the Series C round. Guess who was the seed capital? See above…
+Indonesian aquatech startup eFishery nets $90m in Sequoia, SoftBank-led Seris C - AG Funder News
Trend to Watch: FIFO Ratio
As we pointed out last week, developments in both the composition and use of fish food is a key area to follow in aquaculture. Using less protein to produce more (known as the Fish in: Fish out Ratio) is the goal.
...there has been a marked decrease in the FIFO value of global fed aquaculture down to 0.19, essentially meaning that for every 0.19 kg of whole wild fish used in fishmeal, a kilo of farmed fish is produced.
+New data on marine ingredients shows they are being used more strategically and sustainably - The Fish Site
+Can technology help fix fish-food supply chains - Economist
This isn’t helping
+Anger as “world’s biggest” supertrawlers fish off Cornwall - Cornwall Live
Offshore Renewable Energy
When you look at the North Star website, pictures from the oil and gas operation are photos, images in the offshore wind area are digital mockups.
However, Partners Group, a large private equity firm, “aims to transform North Star into a leading pan-European offshore wind services player” and described offshore wind as an industry with “high barriers to entry, few direct competitors.”
+Partners Group acquires OSV operator North Star - Splash247
Energy Transition
+The periodic table of commodity returns - Visual Capitalist
Raw materials will be at the center of decarbonization efforts and electrification of the economy as we move from fossil fuels to wind and solar power generation, battery- and fuel-cell-based electric vehicles (EVs), and hydrogen production.
+The raw-materials challenge: How the metals and mining sector will be at the core of enabling the energy transition - McKinsey & Co., Metals and Mining
Get used to headlines like this…
+Battery costs rise as lithium demand outstrips supply - FT
Finance
Activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 continues to refine its strategy and innovate in the activist investor space (including bringing access to retail investors).
If you aren’t familiar with them, I’ve written about them and why I put my index allocation in their ETF here:
All Investors in the Engine No. 1 Transform 500 ETF (ticker: VOTE) able to see how their shares are voted on environmental, social and governance proposals.
+Engine No. 1 Announces Real-Time Vote Disclosure and Voting Priorities Ahead of 2022 Company Meetings - BusinessWire
Web3
Still wrapping my head around many things in the ocean economy, where Web3 fits in is just one of them.
+Base Carbon Tonne (BCT): a new Web3 building block - Medium
+Cryptocurrency traders move into carbon markets - WSJ
Something to Keep in Mind
+Not everyone likes ESG - Bloomberg