, Columnist
Shipping's Long, Slow Turn
Maersk's loss and Hanjin's collapse hold the germ of a recovery.
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Turning round a big ship is such a difficult task that it's long been a metaphor for reversing processes driven by their own near-unstoppable momentum.
It's a decent way of describing the problems of the container-shipping industry in recent years. Warnings about overcapacity date back almost a decade, yet even with a slowdown in trade, the global box fleet just kept growing and growing and growing.