Dry bulk shipping has a shot at recovery from 2017

The presently weak dry bulk shipping market has a chance of recovery starting from 2017, as the vessel tonnage sent for scrap this year may surpass the new capacity hitting the waters, according to Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping.

News ID: 63098

Date: 02 April 2016 - 09:31

Hashim shared that over the course of this year up until 13 March, some 11.2m dwt of dry bulk vessel tonnage have been scrapped, and extrapolating that figure up to end-2016 imply around 55m dwt of bulk vessel capacity would have been removed from the global fleet.

On the supply side, Hashim further shared estimates that approximately 40-45m dwt of new vessel tonnage will come into operations over this year, lower than the projected demolished capacity.

“If all the numbers are correct, we will see for the first time a significant reduction of bulk ships,” Hashim said.However, another set of projected figures for 2016 made by Bimco showed tonnage scrapped to be 40m dwt and new capacity delivered at 50m dwt.

But assuming the forecast used by Hashim turns out to be true, he believed that “by end-2016, we will see a better balance of demand and supply for the market, and the market will come back to a level to allow owners to breathe and survive.”

He added: “The solution to achieve that balance rests directly with the owners and the best way is simply to scrap enough ships.”

At present, the global dry bulk shipping market is shadowed by extremely low freight rates, an oversupply of ships, and slowing demand growth.