Buttery: 'Handysize' ships are key to navigating maritime Covid-19 waves

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The years of Covid were “some of the worst years of all time” for shipping, according to Ed Buttery, CEO of the £285.7m Taylor Maritime trust.

Buttery explained that the challenges were primarily due to some ports closing down. However, the impact on shipping companies varied depending on what they transported. While coal and iron ore "went basically to zero" the trust, whose ships carry mainly food, merely saw its trading patterns change.  "We carry food [and] the trade of food does not go away, because people still need to eat, it simply changes," Buttery said. "What we saw, for example, was instead of soybean meal being transported from the US Gulf to China it now goes from Brazil to China and Brazil has managed to take over...