GMS Week 51 – ALL CHANGE!

After a surge that saw the Bangladeshi market rise too fast too soon, in addition to some steady progress made from the firming Pakistani and Indian markets, sub-continent destinations seem to have finally settled down a touch, in the run up to Christmas / New Year’s.

As such, it was no surprise to see Bangladesh sink to the bottom of the sub-continent price rankings this week, whilst India sits atop the pile and Pakistan is not too far behind in second.

Meanwhile, the Turkish market has continued its upward trajectory in impressive form, with steel plate and imported scrap steel prices registering noteworthy gains this week (some not seen since the crash of 2008), while the Turkish Lira too registered an improvement of its own.

On the sales front, a number of decently priced sales were concluded off of the back of recycling levels hitting USD 400/LT LDT (and above) this week, particularly in the Capesize Bulker and VLOC sectors. Moreover, 30 VLOCs have now been sold for recycling so far this year (with one more being concluded this week for an HKC green sale into India), in what has turned into the busiest sector to shed tonnage in 2020 thus far.

In fact, even early 2000s built Capesize Bulkers are now being considered as recycling candidates, so low have charter rates fallen in this particular sector – down to almost breakeven OPEX levels at present and are likely to remain this way for the next 3-4 months at least.

Covid cases continue to surge across the U.S.A. and Europe as we enter peak flu season and some more serious lockdowns have come into place in the U.K., Germany and parts of the U.S. (to name a few).

Overall, it seems to be set to be a bleak midwinter for many and certainly not one that we are accustomed to as all hope for a brighter 2021 ahead.

For week 51 of 2020, GMS demo rankings / pricing for the week are as below.
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Source: GMS