Despite global headwinds, Swire Shipping CEO Jeremy Sutton says its investments in ships and people have put the regional shipping powerhouse in a strong position to capitalise on long-term growth in Papua New Guinea’s economy.

Swire Shipping recently upgraded its North Asia Express (NAX) service connecting North Asia and PNG with the introduction of fixed-day weekly sailings. Credit: Swire Shipping

With final investment decisions [FIDs] on the horizon for key resources projects, it raises the prospect of higher demand for shipping into and out of PNG.

Swire Shipping’s liners serve more than 400 ports in the Asia-Pacific, including 14 in PNG.

CEO Jeremy Sutton tells Business Advantage PNG that the industry is currently under unique pressures, with geopolitical tensions sending costs for building ships, chartering ships and filling containers to “the highest I’ve ever seen.”

However, he remains positive about Papua New Guinea.

We have the largest ships calling into PNG at the moment and we can upsize our ships to create more capacity.

“With the LNG and gas projects, we are seeing some early physical shipment of cargo and fixing of contracts. We are optimistic that this bodes well for the FID and I think we are ready to go,” he says.

Swire’s readiness is the result of years of investment in all elements of the business.

“We make sure that our import shipping services are continuing to get better and better,” Sutton says. “We have increased our frequency of services into PNG, Australia, southeast Asia and north Asia.”

Putting people on the ground

Swire has also invested heavily in having its own people on the ground in PNG to maintain close relationships with its customers in the region.

“In the last 10 years, since the last natural resources boom, we have built a team of our own Swire Shipping people,” he says.

“We have approximately 100 people in PNG. We have our own container depot with our own people that attend training courses for Swire Shipping locally in PNG. We also have quite a lot of interchange between our teams in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and PNG, and rotate our managers, both our senior PNG managers and foreigners, through those Swire shipping jobs.”

Capacity

Historically, PNG has had issues around shipping capacity, but Sutton says that Swire has learned from past experiences.

“We have the largest ships calling into PNG at the moment and we can upsize our ships to create more capacity,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to scale up and scale down capacity when you’ve got structural solutions in place, which we didn’t have back in 2014.”

He says the company will also be reviewing new ships “in the next year or two” to service the PNG market “beyond the short-term boom we hope to see.”

This article was first published in Mining and Energy 2025/26, released in October. Read the full edition here.