Shipping Statistics and Market Review

摘要

All seemed lost on bulk shipping markets early in 2016. The BDI fell to new record lows and period rates dropped well below operating costs across all vessels sizes. Looking back, 2015 has been a year of destroyed hopes for bulk ship-owners who had been direly anticipating the year in the first place. During the summer of 2014, the fundamentals for the year 2015 looked rather reassuring on both sides of the market balance. Dry bulk shipping demand was expected to record another healthy increase, fuelled by China's seemingly unstoppable economic growth and its insatiable appetite for industry raw materials, and the supply side expansion was expected to slow down markedly. Although both elements combined would not have been sufficient to remove the evident oversupply, the greater dynamics of the demand side would at least have helped to reduce the oversupply and thus relieve some pressure from the ailing freight and period markets.