Container shipping companies face a challenging couple of years, but it shouldn’t be as bad as the decade-long doldrums the industry endured in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

That was the view Thursday from Rolf Habben Jansen, the head of Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s No. 5 container carrier. Business is going to be difficult for two to three years, he said as the Hamburg-based company announced quarterly earnings.

“I do expect that the market is going to remain under significant pressure,” he said in an interview. Rates are low and it’s impossible to say when that’ll change, and the global economic outlook is cloudier than it was three months ago. One source of optimism: He expects some volume growth in 2024.

So how severe might the downdraft be? And how long might it last for an industry that struggled to make money for a full 10 years leading up to the pandemic? He cited four fundamental differences today versus 2009 that should lessen the pain:

• Smaller orderbook. New vessels on order amount to 27% of the global fleet today. Back then it was close to 60%. “That’s certainly one important difference,” he said.
• Older ships. “The average age of ships is much higher today than it was in 2009 so you will start to see more scrapping, especially in the second half of this decade.”
• Slower sailing. New pollution rules mean “people need to sail slower every year if you want to continue running with the same ships because otherwise you don’t comply with the regulations.”
• Cash abounds. “Contrary to 2009, everyone today has a strong balance sheet,” he said.

“It’s not unlikely that we are going to have a downturn that could last a couple of years but it does not look very likely that it’s going to last as long as we saw the last time,” Jansen said. “It took almost a decade before things came back into balance. Now I think you’re looking more at 24-36 months or so.”