OCEAN FREIGHT COMMENTS
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: The freight trade is getting pretty thin this week. As is normal, the only people looking to push anything going into the Lunar Holiday week are those who must close something before everyone goes on holiday. The first part of the week saw a continued downward price trend, but we have now seen some dry-bulk freight buyers trying to book something quick in the spot markets and this has caused a slight market turnaround. Net, however, we are now basically back to rate levels that traded last week, and I therefore must call things unchanged for the most part.
Below is a recent history of freight values for Capesize vessels of iron ore from Western Australia to South China:
The charts below represent 2017 annual totals versus 2016 annual totals for container shipments to the Philippines.
