Ships Monthly Magazine No.592 Farewell Saga Ruby - April 2014 Back Issue

Analysing the state of the global
shipping industry is a difficult
business. While generally positive
figures for the UK’s economy
were issued during January,
suggesting that for some things are looking
up, is the global shipping industry also in a
better shape in 2014?
When the recession started in 2008, the
industry was seen as an indicator of how the
world economy was faring. A key measure
used by industry to track freight rates, the
Baltic Dry Index, has been seen as a forecaster
of global economic demand. And although it
has lost half of its value recently, demand for
dry cargo ships is getting stronger, say owners
and analysts, as growth in bulk cargoes such as
iron ore and coal outpaces the supply of new
tonnage for the first time in seven years.
With this news it seems that the global
shipping industry is poised to emerge from its
longest downturn in three decades, buoyed
by an end to years of over-capacity that have
depressed freight rates since the end of 2008.
And there is good news from the tanker sector
too, where rates for very large crude carriers
(VLCCs) on routes to Asia have climbed.
But one company, Shipping Corporation of
India (SCI), said that, although its vessels were
fully deployed, it was not getting good freight
rates, as there is still an over-supply of vessels
in the market. And with ever bigger container
ships being built, as we report in Waterfront
news, this will inevitably have an impact on
future freight rates, possibly to the detriment
of the industry as a whole.