With a wide range of uses, the humble soybean has become a major driver of demand over the past decade for the Panamax and geared fleets. The commodity has experienced the fastest expansion of planting area relative to other agricultural crops and shipments now make up a quarter of total seaborne agri-bulk demand, with growth forecast to continue into the future.

Over the past 8 years, the bulk fleet has hit achieved a feat we all dream of — it has managed to reverse the aging process. But getting younger isn’t all positive, particularly when rates are low and the pool of obvious scrap candidates is quickly running dry.

In early May, we wrote about how Chinese policy decisions were having a knock on impact on the freight market, concluding with the following comments… “[the] biggest concern for the future of the freight market [is] the ability of the Chinese government through its policy decisions to control how it moves. Whilst there is no implication that the Chinese government is looking to directly impact on international seaborne freight rates, the tools it uses to control the domestic economy can only be finessed to a degree and there are inevitable knock on impacts into dry bulk”

So far this year, we count 26 confirmed new orders for dry bulk vessels. This is a pretty derisory number and continues a trend running from the start of 2016,  since when orders for just 43 ships have been placed — easily the lowest 18 month total in the last 40 years. This is good news for those worried about future deliveries tipping the supply-demand balance in an unfavourable direction, but it is clearly not enough to keep the shipyards busy, even with an uptick in ordering in other vessel sectors.

BP released their annual “Statistical Review of World Energy” this week. In terms of the impact of the energy markets on bulk carrier demand, its is changes to patterns of coal consumption and trade that matter the most. We present some of the key highlights of the report and related information below, along with our analysis and interpretation of what it means for the bulk market.

We’re now nearly halfway through the year so it seems an opportune time to have a detailed look at the supply side statistics. What’s coming? What’s going? And how fast is the fleet growing?

Petroleum coke (commonly referred to as petcoke) is a by-product from oil refining. A niche part of the bulk market, petcoke shipments grew by nearly 10% last year and conditions look right for a continued expansion of the trade, driven by growing product availability and changes to demand patterns.

Last week the ‘Belt and Road Forum’ was held in Beijing, attended by 30 heads of state and senior officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United Nations, to discuss China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative. We’ve had many questions on the topic and what it might mean for shipping so this week we take a cross-sector look at what we know so far and the key take-aways from the recent summit.

We have just completed the latest update to our supply, demand and rate forecasts. Despite the near term economic picture looking slightly more challenging than it was a few months ago, our overall view on the longer term cycle remains on track. As usual, we provide an update on some of the key trends here, but if you want the full details, please speak to your broking contacts.

Cyclone Debbie made landfall in Queensland, Australia on March 28th, hitting the region’s coal mines and transport infrastructure. As a result, shipments from the world’s largest high quality coking coal region were severely disrupted. Via our monitoring of port congestion, we recorded a surge in the number of vessels waiting at anchor in the major Australian coking coal ports in recent weeks, having a knock-on effect on the market as a whole. As operations start to return to normal, we assess the initial impact and lasting effects on the market.