Reading the Project Cargo Pipeline

By Luke King

The hydrogen dream has faded. The carbon capture pipeline has cooled. But for anyone still wondering where project cargo demand is actually headed through 2029, the answer from Breakbulk Europe 2026 was emphatic: power generation is surging, wind remains the structural backbone, and data centers are generating far more freight than many operators realize.

The “Project Cargo Market Outlook 2026–2029” session, moderated by Yorck Niclas Prehm, head of market intelligence at Toepfer Transport, brought together Luke Mace, senior vice president of project logistics and global freight forwarding at GEODIS; Lars Feller, CEO of dship Carriers; and David Huck, chief operating officer of Peel Ports Group, for a candid assessment of which sectors are delivering volume and where the next bottlenecks will appear.

Mace opened with a frank admission about the post-pandemic sustainability wave. “When we came out of COVID, there was a huge focus on sustainability, on carbon capture and hydrogen. To be honest, that’s almost entirely tailed off,” he said. The flip side is a power generation surge he described as accelerating beyond comprehension. Energy insecurity, AI infrastructure and data centers are creating a vicious cycle with no obvious ceiling.

“I don’t think people quite realize how much business is actually associated with a data center,” Mace said. “We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with someone that’s moving 14,000 Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) units just in one country next year.”

When asked to rank five sectors by realistic cargo contribution through 2029 — not headline investment, but freight actually likely to move — the panel broadly agreed. Feller put wind first, then oil and gas, data centers, CCS and nuclear.

Mace, reflecting GEODIS’s strong Americas footprint, placed oil and gas first, then wind, with data centers climbing fast. Huck, speaking from a UK port perspective, put wind at the forefront, followed by carbon capture schemes such as HyNet Liverpool Bay and the anticipated Bacton development off East Anglia, with nuclear and data centers further back.

Feller used the session to explain the thinking behind dship’s D500 newbuilding program — six vessels of around 15,000 deadweight and 500 tonnes combined lifting capacity now entering service. The ships are already fixed for a few years. “Heavy-lift ships are being fixed faster because there’s a limited number of vessels in the market,” he said, noting that some have been contracted a year before delivery — unprecedented for the segment. The D500’s twin deck runs to 114 meters, a reflection of how dramatically onshore wind blade lengths have grown. “I wish we would have ordered 10 and not six,” Feller said.

Huck described a parallel challenge on the port side. Blade lengths currently handled at 80 to 85 meters are heading to 130 to 140 within five years, and Peel Ports is already seeing trial blades of 130 meters. Quayside key loadings must scale from 20 tonnes per square meter toward 40 or 50 to qualify for major contracts. “The days of just having five or 10 tonne loading per square meter have gone,” he said. With harbor revision orders requiring a minimum seven-year lead time and a 25-year business planning horizon, Huck was direct: ports cannot wait for cargo to be committed. “If it isn’t in place, simply put from a port perspective, you don't qualify.”

On geography, each speaker offered a different read, shaped by where they sit in the supply chain. Feller sees Asia-to-Europe and Asia-to-Americas as dship’s dominant trade lanes, with growing eastbound flow from Europe via the Americas. Mace flagged Australia as consistently outperforming expectations, China as shifting from export-driven to locally directed project decisions, and the Middle East as set to accelerate sharply post-conflict.

He was measured about Europe. “Compared to the growth and the opportunities that we’re seeing, it’s growing but it’s just not growing at the same level.”

The session closed on a note Mace called “the build-the-boat-in-the-basement story” — the persistent failure of engineers to consult logistics teams before finalizing cargo dimensions. The industry must plan backward from destination constraints: mountain roads, community access, port limitations, last-mile restrictions. “The concerns are less on the ocean side these days than the pre- and post-carriage,” he said. “And I think some still haven’t quite got their head around that yet.”

Top photo (L-R): Yorck Niclas Prehm, Lars Feller, Luke Mace, David Huck. Credit: Richard Theemling Photography

Second: Lars Feller and Luke Mace. Credit: Richard Theemling Photography