44 week: Black Sea, Azov Sea; Coaster shipments
Last week, freight rates in the Azov Sea continued to rise. The price for 3k parcel of wheat from Azov to the Marmara Sea reached USD 47 per ton. A sufficient amount of cargo on the market allows Owners to make optimistic forecasts for the next few weeks. Export prices for wheat continue to grow; the cost of a ton of Russian wheat with 12.5 percent protein content and delivery date for the end of November increased to USD 326 within a week’s time. Along with price rise, freight rates are also growing. The export duty for the period from November 10 to 16 will increase from current USD 67 to USD 69.9 per ton. Even such a rise in the duty does not reduce the amount of cargo offer on the market. Open tonnage is still in short supply, so Charterers whose contractual obligations force them to make shipments in spot dates will overpay for freight. At the moment, many Charterers fix cargoes for the end of November in order to avoid problems with searching for tonnage in spot dates. Cargo offer does not reduce, there is still not much tonnage, so in the next few weeks there is expected no decrease in freight rates on the Azov Sea market.
Charterers prefer small Handy vessels and big coasters to standard ones in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. Grain Charterers continue their pact of not giving cargoes to the market. They definitely expected to bring the same influence as Persian Gulf Charterers: Owners and brokers of the Persian Gulf area say that such method correlated around USD 10 to 15 pmt in favor of Charterers. Unfortunately for Charterers, Handy Owners do not see any possibility to correlate the prices despite the small amount of Handy parties at the Black Sea. Therefore, Charterers put their attention for big coasters of 15 to 20K dwt which attract with their hire rate of USD 21-23k daily against USD 30-35k daily for Handy. Big players advised that they are not going to hurry to end the silence, expecting a further rate drop.