Shipping

Filed

• brief15 Sept
  VLCC: the premium is in the ballast leg
  TD3C has firmed without a matching move in cargo volumes. Owners are pricing the risk of waiting empty inside the Gulf — the ballast leg — rather than the laden transit out.
• article12 Sept
  The long way round: what the Red Sea diversions did to the box market
  When container lines stopped transiting Bab el-Mandeb, they did not lose ships — they lost weeks. The maths of a 10-to-14-day detour explains almost everything that followed in rates, schedules and port congestion.
• article08 Sept
  Every ro-ro is a sealift ship
  Strategic sealift is not a navy. It is a car carrier under charter, a ferry with a strengthened deck, an LNG tanker whose route is a matter of state. Reading the merchant fleet as a military asset is the habit this journal exists to teach.
• dossier06 Sept
  Pure car and truck carrier (PCTC)
  The ro-ro that moves the world's cars is also the ro-ro that would move an armoured brigade. A vessel class whose civilian and military readings are almost the same ship.

Wire

1. 18 Sept 06:15ZVLCC MEG–China fixtures thin; owners hold offers above last done as charterers wait for the weekend's transit picture.
2. 17 Sept 12:10ZContainer lines flag further Cape routings for Q4 schedules; Bab el-Mandeb transit count remains well below the pre-crisis baseline.
3. 16 Sept 17:20ZCapesize 5TC softens on lighter iron-ore enquiry out of West Australia; Atlantic holds.
4. 15 Sept 07:30ZBrief: VLCC rates firm on positioning risk rather than demand — the premium is in the ballast leg.
5. 12 Sept 14:00ZSCFI composite lower for a third week as newbuild deliveries land on the long-route loops.