Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: After losing value Monday and Tuesday, the Baltic Freight indices clawed back up to October 31 levels. It feels like we are once again in a market that is steaming in circles and looking for direction. The North American fall harvest is coming to an end, but we should continue to see good grain export volumes through February or March 2017.
October was a record month for U.S. grain export ports. The Mississippi River shipped 8.91 MMT of grain in a single month. Soybeans were the commodity that made it happen, as beans were the only commodity to have a record single month. Corn experienced it eighth-highest month on record, wheat came in with its 17th and sorghum with its 18th biggest loading month. However, the weather was excellent and logistics were perfect; together with soybean demand this led to a record single month of export loadings. For cargo demand, that is about as good as it gets.
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 Indonesia.
