Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: The past freight rally is certainly over and we are back to a Dry-Bulk (and container) market that is struggling. The Baltic indices are bouncing around a little but the physical markets are not really moving much. It is feeling like a stare-off game where buyers and sellers are trying to see who blinks first. The slight improvement in reported rates are more of an adjustment than any real upward movement in the overall rate structure.
Q1 financial reports are being published by shipping companies and the results are understandably not good.
There is an abundance of underutilized grain export capacity sitting in the U.S. Gulf and PNW.
Below is a recent history of freight values for Capesize vessels of iron ore from Western Australia to China:
The charts below represent year-to-date 2016 versus January-December 2015 annual totals for container shipments to Thailand.
