Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: I’ve searched far and wide to come up with something new and interesting to say about these freight markets, but I fear that simply does not exist.
Last week I stated that the “…market continues to steam in circles” as freight markets were down $.50-0.75/MT; this week, they are mostly back up the same amount. The only exception is down in South America, where the vessel lineups continue to grow and the grain freight rates are up $1.50-$2.00/MT from the previous week.
We are in the process of finishing up the U.S. HRW wheat harvest, which did not really have much impact on rates from the U.S. Gulf. Now we will want to see what happens with the October-November corn and soybean harvest exports. It is interesting to see the very wide spread in the FOB vessel values of U.S. sorghum and corn. Sorghum values are at +95 CZ while corn sits at +29 CZ for August shipment.
Below is a recent history of freight values for Capesize vessels of iron ore from Western Australia to China:
The charts below represent YTD 2017 versus 2016 annual totals for container shipments to Thailand.
