Shipergy hosted its annual IE Week party in London on Sunday night. Image Credit: Ship & Bunker

The bunker market is facing a gloomy start to 2026, with increased competition among bunker traders driving margins down, according to trading firm Shipergy.

Shipergy hosted its annual IE Week party at The Market Tavern in London on Sunday night, bringing together a wide range of industry stakeholders at the start of the week-long series of energy events in the UK capital.

Ship & Bunker caught up with Shipergy CEO Daniel Rose at the event to gauge his views on the current state of the market.

"Speaking to a broad section of the industry, what I'm finding is that people are finding market conditions quite challenging at the moment," Rose said.

"Everybody's talking about how bad margins are, people are talking about slower-paying clients, and it's a theme we're hearing consistently across the industry right now."

Rose questioned whether an organisation could be set up to guarantee minimum standards for the bunker industry, to avoid the risk of increased competition driving a race to the bottom in terms offered to bunker buyers.

"You really need an industry body or a regulator almost to define certain guardrails for the industry," he said.

"In practice, the global nature of our industry makes that very difficult to achieve, and if regulation was applied regionally, it could put some at a disadvantage whilst others would have an unfair advantage."

Shipergy is now selling about 450,000-500,000 mt/year of bunker fuel, of which about 8% comes from its affiliate's requirements, up from about 350,000 mt in the 2023-24 financial year, Rose told Ship & Bunker last month.