In Hellenic Shipping News 30/04/2015
Market plays in the iron ore commodities’ markets, are expected to carve out the future demand for the shipping industry as well, said Allied Shipbroking in its latest weekly report. According to the report, “with chatter circulating the market that some of the major dry bulk commodities are set for a turnaround in fortunes after their most recent price rally, many traders have started to seem more bullish and hopeful that we may have finally bottomed. Yet is there really fire everywhere you see smoke. Things seem to be a touch more complicated and with the commodities markets being the demand driver for both wet and dry tonnage, it is interesting to see how deep these latest promises hold”.
As Mr. George Lazaridis, Head of Market Research & Asset Valuations with Allied Shipbroking noted, “the truth is that we have seen some of the biggest gains since 2012 in iron ore prices. The climb was more than 14 per cent over the past 2 weeks, marking a new month high of USD 53.8 per tonne according to the TSI price index. At the same time, as we have been reporting during the same time period, Rio Tinto and Fortescue have been heavily hitting the charter market with fresh inquiries, something that has notably pushed freight rates for Capes on the Australia/Far East routes considerably”.
He added that “things have pulled back slightly in terms of new voyage requirements, yet with the commodity price still looking to hold upward momentum it is not without reason that some keep a hopeful position of the prospects that the May program may hold. As for the reasoning for most of this, it seems that a combination of restocking by Chinese steel mills, coupled with expectations that its government will provide further support to spur economic growth, has encouraged most of these larger mining companies to take on their competition head on flooding the market with their cheaper prices produce in order to gain market share and lower their marginal costs”.
Meanwhile, “while all this has being going on during the past two weeks, another major mining company, namely BHP Billiton has announced its intention to defer a project that would increase capacity of its Australian mines to 290m tonnes a year by mid-2017. Along with this, caution must also still be kept as to how the market can fair in the likely sce-nario that China holds on to its slower economic growth trajectory, despite any efforts made through further fiscal easing, leaving a minimal demand growth for the market. The reality seems to be that Chinese demand will continue to wane in the near term, something that will carry on placing pressure on all major commodities. As such any renewed market demand must come from elsewhere, countries such as India, which for the moment do not seem to be up to the task of propping up global demand by the same amount”.
Lazaridis also mentioned that “through all this there are subtle silver linings to be found. For one, the deferral by BHP Billiton of extra investment spending could be part of an effort to squeeze its current marginal costs, as it has been ramping up production of its western Australian mines during the past couple of months. Let’s not forget that Rio Tinto had made a similar decision last year, which as is now seen, did little to deter it from ramping up its produc-tion volumes this year. At the same time and as the three major Australian miners as well as Brazil’s Vale, seem adamant in taking up further market share, this could likely translate into a good increase in tonne-mile demand, taking into account that most of the capacity they replace is likely to be closer to home or even internally within China. As such the main issue remains as to how much the capacity growth of the fleet can be restricted. If we can avoid a complete market collapse this year, investor appetite could eventually kick in, financing an actual rebound in the commodity markets”, he concluded.
