Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: It was another bumpy week for dry-bulk markets, and it was mostly a seller’s game for the first half of the week. Late Thursday, markets started to see seeing some buying interest return and experienced a partial recovery. The Q4 Panamax FFA paper market traded down to $31,400/day before fighting back to $33,750/day at the close. Overall, physical rates are lower for the week.
There is nothing new to report in container freight markets other than the CEO of Maersk says things will not improve until American consumers reduce their buying volumes.
The Lower Mississippi River and Port of New Orleans are now fully open, but NOLA grain loadings remain greatly restrained due to Hurricane Ida. To date, only two grain export facilities have resumed loading operations (LDC in Baton Rouge and ADM in Destrehan). FOB vessel export grain values remain volatile and largely unquoted.
