We've been banging on for some time at bunker conferences, and in writing, about the grave dangers of default by shipping companies in all sectors, increasingly pressed by high costs and low revenues. New ships flooding an already over-capacitated market, continued basic economic recession (signs of slight improvement in parts of Europe notwithstanding), and the jerkiest of comebacks in world trade (still unhealthily dependent on a limping Chinese economy) all point to an unprecedentedly long recession. That is all common knowledge, and it was puzzling that there have been thus far, relatively speaking, so few bankruptcies.

Now we do seem to be hitting the point where reserves are seriously declined and things are beginning to crack. The powerful D'Amato di Navigazione and Hapag-Lloyd are seeking bankruptcy protection, the travails of CSAV continue, and rumours rumble around the market about the giant French and Danish liner operators. Is this the beginning of the flood? If the giants are beginning to totter, the smaller players will also be feeling the pressure. Like people clinging by their finger-tips to a high wall, who finally cannot hold on any longer, perhaps more shipping companies are coming close to letting go?

I make no apologies for painting a pessimistic picture. While there are many and good reasons to accept the received wisdom that recessions are largely driven by lack of confidence, and that talking the situation up is one of the ways to solve the problem, I am afraid we are rather past that now and we need to get real. As the credit squeeze continues to tighten and high capital adequacy demands on banks from governments contradict orders from the same governments to increase commercial lending, there is still constriction in the flow of money as well as goods, so Keynesian solutions are hampered, like a person trying to pull up their trousers while standing on them – nothing moves.

We can only comment on the coal face, on day-to-day trading issues facing the bunker supply market as the risk of major default by buyers becomes a more and more likely event. It looks like the dam will first crack before bursting, but the question is where? Which buyer will go first? And how can bunker supplier/traders take steps to protect themselves against the fall-out?

Perhaps the first step is to recognise the danger is real. There is a kind of intellectual acceptance, just like with the recognition that global warming and peak oil may well mean we will all have to change our way of living and eating.  But do we really 'believe' it yet? Are we really acting on the basis of the understanding, or just carrying on as 'normal'?

It's about change management, though it will soon become increasingly about crisis management. A sensible and far sighted approach to the first can minimise how much of the second you need to do.

Two steps. One, accept that there are going to be problems with your customers, whoever they are – defaults and also erratic payments will play havoc with your cash management systems. And two, enhance your market and customer monitoring systems - work more closely with the credit reporting agencies. Like spiders sensitive to movements across the web, they are picking up market rumours and news, and are trained to assess evaluate whatever they hear. Ocean Intelligence, for one, has been designed to work with its customers on a much wider base than simply delivering credit reports with no opportunity to talk directly to the analyst who supports you. We can be used in innovative ways to serve unprecedented situations – we are ready to respond and open to ideas for how to maximise the benefits we can deliver in terms of market and company intelligence.

That is what is needed if you are to predict as closely as possible which of your customers is going to hit problems. Forewarned is, as the old chestnut has it, forearmed.