Bookings for capesize vessels to deliver cargoes to China rose 20 percent last month, according to figures from a unit of the world’s biggest shipbroker.
Raw-materials producers and traders hired 65 such vessels to make shipments to China, compared with 54 in December, data from Clarkson Research Services Ltd. showed. Capesizes typically haul coal and iron ore to make steel. China is the world’s biggest steel producer.
The data provide a snapshot of single-voyage, or spot, charters. They exclude long-term freight contracts that commodity producers and steel mills may have in place, and may be incomplete because brokers and traders are free to leave shipping deals unreported.
Lease rates for capesizes dived 70 percent in January to $5,910 a day, according to the Baltic Exchange in London. That compares with operating costs of about $7,000 as estimated by Dag Kilen, an analyst at RS Platou Markets AS in Oslo. The ships are too big to fit through the Panama Canal and must sail around South America’s Cape Horn or South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
Capesizes, the largest vessels tracked by the Baltic Dry Index of commodity-shipping costs, have a carrying capacity of at least 100,000 deadweight tons, according to Clarkson Research Services, a unit of London-based Clarkson Plc.