2026 Breakbulk and Project Cargo Conference Breakbulk & Project Cargo
“ What does that mean for [ the project cargo ] sector? Well, potential large projects for the reconstruction of Ukraine are probably going to remain on hold at least for the next year,” he said.
In the meantime, the rerouting of LNG tankers due to the war is creating bottlenecks at the Panama Canal, with overall transits up 16 % in March compared with February, Sevilla-Macip said.
Worryingly, meteorological forecasts for a strong El Niño / La Niña weather phenomenon this year threaten renewed drought conditions for the canal. Such conditions would force the waterway to again limit the number of transits and the size of vessels, and that, in turn, would drive up the auction price for ad hoc transits.
‘ Balancing priorities’
Guillermina del Pino, head of project logistics for the Americas at Siemens Energy, said the extreme uncertainty has forced shippers to adjust their supply chain strategies on a daily basis.
“ I’ ve been doing this for 27 years, and today, you would probably look at the next two to three years as a‘ long-term’ strategy because we don’ t know what will happen in the next 10 years,” she said.
One upside, however, is that project cargo shippers are now working more closely with contract managers and legal teams within their companies, del Pino added.
Mace described this dynamic as one in which project logistics providers are constantly“ balancing priorities.”
“ Every couple of years there’ s a new industry trend,” he said.“ Today it’ s AI. Before, it was sustainability; before that, cyber security; before that, gender diversity. These are all equally important topics.”
Mace said that project forwarders invest heavily in these areas, and that investment must be maintained even when the industry moves onto the next topic.
“ You pivot now to putting more resources into dealing with the current topic, and you just keep adding more and more people to your organization,” he said, adding that customers still demand cheap deals from their forwarders, despite them carrying“ crazy overheads.”
“ Sometimes I think it becomes a bit of a distraction, because I tend to spend 90 % of my time talking about things that have nothing to do with delivering cargo,” said Mace.“ We’ ve become lawyers and finance directors. We’ ve become everything, not only delivering cargo.”
A‘ hungry’ market
Still, despite geopolitical conflicts and the resulting shipping disruptions, and US President Donald Trump’ s continued efforts to impose higher import tariffs, global economic growth continues. S & P Global expects global GDP growth of 2.4 % in 2026.
“ Probably we’ re going to see some adjustments in the next couple months if the situation in the Middle East continues, but it’ s still going to be growth,” Sevilla-Macip said.
Likewise, the long-term outlook for project and breakbulk cargo demand is largely healthy, driven mostly by AI data center construction and electricity projects.
Tracie Morris Schaefer www. joc. com June 2026 | Journal of Commerce 11