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March 2022
Due to supply concerns at domestic power plants, Indonesian authorities banned coal exports during January 2022, removing around 30% of global coal volumes from the bulk market as a result. This caused Newcastle coal futures to increase by more than a third and added strain on coal inventories across Asia. The ban was lifted in February.
During the pandemic retail sales and personal savings have been increasing in tandem and supported US consumer demand for imports from the Far East. Now, retail sales appear to be receding and the question is whether the past two years’ savings will be enough to support continued high import volumes as consumer sentiment is dropping and the war in Ukraine continues.
October 2021
Bunker sales in the world’s largest bunkering hub fell to 3.94 million tonnes in September, the lowest level since June 2020 and a 6.7% drop from September 2020.
After a slow start to the US soya bean export season, partly due to disruption from Hurricane Ida, US soya bean inspections ahead of exports have jumped to 1.6m tonnes in the week ending 7 October. This represents a 90.9% jump from the week before and is the highest level seen since the start of February 2021 which marked the end of the main export season of the 2020/2021 marketing year.
Has the lid finally come off for crude oil tanker demolition in 2021? If judged by the 1.9m DWT of capacity that was removed in September, the answer is “yes”.
September 2021
As the average length of the journey increases, partly due to port congestions in China, soaking up capacity and pushing up spot rates, shipowners will likely be enjoying high freight rates until the end of the year.
For almost three months now, the spot freight rate for containerised goods shipped by sea from North Europe to the US East Coast has been 210% higher than last year (1 July – 23 Sept).
In the first seven months of the year Chinese coal imports from Australia have totalled just 780,000 tonnes as Chinese restrictions on Australian coal have started to hurt, according to Oceanbolt.
Exports from the major US west coast container ports took another hit in July, falling to their lowest level since at least 2010, the earliest BIMCO has data for.
The 49.2 composite reading of the Caixin/Markit China manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) in August marks the first contraction in activity since April 2020 when China was recovering from its initial COVID-19 outbreak.