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And jeremy, let me end on this. you and i have spoken before over the past few years about the whole supply chain chaos and how that sent the transportation costs through the roof. but eventually they came down. and now some in your industry say the prices have come down so much, it s just not sustainable. is that your view? well, i think certainly there s two factors there. one is that there s no doubt that the supply and demand squeeze was very tight during 2021 to 2022, and we saw freight rates much higher than the normal industry average. we ve had a rebalancing in 2023 due to an inventory overhang, so the sales to inventory ratios have been quite high. our customers are gradually burning through those inventories and will start their reordering cycles quite soon. and when that happens, some of the spot market rates will start to move up again. but the area that probably, you know, is the most important longer term is that as and when we move to these green fuels, it will be unsust ....
Time to those products. so in some cases, probably adding two or three times the cost of conventionally moving it with a point to point or port to port container shipping operation. and jeremy, let me end on this. you and i have spoken before over the past few years about the whole supply chain chaos and how that sent the transportation costs through the roof. but eventually they came down. and now some in your industry say the prices have come down so much, it s just not sustainable. is that your view? well, i think certainly there s two factors there. one is that there s no doubt that the supply and demand squeeze was very tight during 2021 to 2022, and we saw freight rates much higher than the normal industry average. we ve had a rebalancing in 2023 due to an inventory overhang, so the sales to inventory ratios have been quite high. our customers are gradually burning through those inventories and we ll start their reordering cycles quite soon. and when that happens, some of the spo ....
We ve had a rebalancing in 2023 due to an inventory overhang, so the sales to inventory ratios have been quite high. our customers are gradually burning through those inventories and we ll start their reordering cycles quite soon. and when that happens, some of the spot market rates will start to move up again. but the area that probably, you know, is the most important longer term is that as and when we move to these green fuels, it will be unsustainable to be able to operate the ships at the same freight rates as we do today when the fuel costs are 200% to 300% more. so we will need to move the freight rates up in line with those higher fuel costs because of the green fuels. but i think if we do that in a transparent way and we do that in a clear way, customers will understand that and everybody can understand that the cost is more, and we can be transparent and we could pass that on down through the supply chain to make sure that all the products that we buy in the future as consume ....
To an inventory overhang, so the sales to eventually ratios have been quite high. our customers are gradually burning through those inventories and we ll start their reordering cycles quite soon. and when that happens, some of the spot market rates will start to move up again. but the area that probably, you know, is the most important longer term is is that as and when we move longer term is that as and when we move to these green fuels, it will be unsustainable to be able to operate the ships at the same freight rates as we do today when the fuel costs are 200% to 300% more. so we will need to move the freight rates up in line with those higher fuel costs because of the green fuels. but i think if we do that in a transparent way and we do that in a clear way, customers will understand that and everybody can understand that the cost is more and we can be transparent and we could pass that on down through the supply chain to make sure that all the products that we buy in the future as ....
We have amazon with all of these different prime day sales during the year. that s the biggest sort of over every retailer s head the fact that you can check these prices on amazon and they re benchmarking against the best prices. i shed a tear for the retailers out there that were able to survive the pandemic that now have this inventory overhang and have to liquidate all of this stuff into an inflationary environment. i think it s so frustrating and everybody has a smartphone, everybody seems to be on amazon prime and that is the benchmark and that s just going to frustrate everyone. so when we re talking for over a year we ve been talking about supply chain issues, shortages, et cetera, how are the brick and mortar folks going to handle this season? are they stocked? are they overstocked? are they understocked? it seems like they re overstocked and many of them have curtailed their return. it s a superfrustrating thing as i said. ....