What will sustainable shipping look like in the decades ahead? In the clamour to cut carbon emissions it would be easy to forget that building a sustainable business is more than a single-topic subject.

It is a question that came to the fore during the third-quarter reporting season. While a growing number of public shipowners have begun to address the need to publish carbon pollution reports as part of their environmental, social and corporate governance strategies, few appear to have yet made the bigger leap to think about their long-term sustainability.