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Shipping market insight

In the beginning of the summer period SnP activity was firm with numerous buyers, coming mainly from Greece and the Far East, inspecting ships and competing, something that eventually drove asset prices up along together with the rise in the freight market.

Many ship-owners believed, and some of them still do, that maybe this upward movement in rates was the beginning of better days for the market that had remained stacked for a prolonged period of time at extremely low levels.

As owners observed more cargos becoming available and charterers paying more to fix dry bulk tonnage, sentiment changed and morale overall improved, leading even those owners that refrained from SnP activity for over a year, to step off the sidelines and start exploring buying opportunities. So up until the end of July we saw a significant rise in interest for dry bulk second-hand tonnage and more specifically Panamax and Capesize vessels.

Unfortunately, this interest stalled and on top of that rates started to decline on the back of bad news coming from the Chinese stock market and the local economy, which have more or less affected the markets worldwide, pushing down further commodity prices as well.

But, has China’s crisis affected shipowners buying appetite? After studying recent records of SnP activity we could argue that buying interest remains overall firm, something that can be also deducted from the number of buyers inspecting modern and older vessels that are available for sale.

Essentially, China’s economic turmoil has mostly affected the levels that buyers are willing to offer and not the interest to buy per se. In fact, we observe that for a number of sale candidates out there, five to ten buyers have expressed their interest, a sign that interest remains firm despite the negative correction in freights and worries from the Far East. For example the “TENNEI MARU” (58kdwt, blt 09 China) was inspected by ten parties, the “OCEAN CHIE” (52kdwt, blt 03 Japan) by seven, while the “RONDEAU” (76kdwt, blt 06 Japan) attracted the interest of five or six prospective buyers.

Hence, we could say that even though the market was definitely affected by China’s recent crisis, many Greek and other owners keep their eyes wide open and are ready to make their move feeling that it is probably the right moment to do so. This in itself reflects the fact that many owners indeed perceive current asset prices as low and attractive and additionally that there is some optimism still surrounding the future of the Dry Bulk market.

It is, as always, of great interest to see how the SnP and Freight markets will behave in the last quarter of 2015, as throughout this year prices have been moving lower and lower compared to 2014, and numerous transactions took place, involving both traditional players as well as fairly young medium-sized firms.

Finally, let us hope that soon we will see some positive changes and robust growth in the world economy something that will help our industry advance and find its way out of the crisis that has been dominating post 2008.

source: http://coalspot.com