Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: In this market, what goes up does not stay up for long. The market rally of the last three weeks has come to an end as the holiday period approaches. I guess those who needed to get coverage before leaving on holiday did. You will notice a big range in values in the below Capesize vessel rates from West Australia to China, but the fact of the matter is that rates closed out the week at the lower end of the range. Even the Handysize market finally topped and set back a little this week. This capped a three-month rally for the Handysize vessel index.
Aside from the Western holidays, the Chinese New Year (the year of the Horse) comes early this year on January 31, which means that the two-week celebrations in Asia will also start soon. Businesswise things should get fairly quiet fairly quick.
Below is a recent history of freight values for Capesize vessels of iron ore from Western Australia to China:
The charts below represent January-December 2011 and January-December 2012 annual totals versus January-September 2013 year-to-date container shipments for China.
