Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting:It was quite a rally in the Baltic Indices this week; at least in terms of the percentage movement.
However, when a market is down this low it does not take much to produce a double digit percentage change.
Is this the turnaround in ocean freight values that vessel owners were hoping for? Maybe not, but it will provide some relief against the prevailing poor vessel economics and it may confirm that we have put in the lows for the year. The physical market is not up as much as the Baltic Indices but things are a bit better and the Pacific Panamax segments seem to be getting a good bounce. We will have to see if this can hold until we get into the North American fall harvest season.
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 2013 annual totals versus January-August 2014 container shipments for China.
