Shipping industry is international in nature and sensitive to the changes of world economy and business environment. Especially tramp shipping is more fluctuated than liner shipping sector where shipping conference exists and is difficult to enter the...
Shipping industry is international in nature and sensitive to the changes of world economy and business environment. Especially tramp shipping is more fluctuated than liner shipping sector where shipping conference exists and is difficult to enter the market place because the liner shipping is monopolized by only a few lines. In contrast, there is not such a cartel in tramp shipping sector which is close to perfect competition market. Tramp shipping companies are always exposed to the risk of volatility of freight rate and that is why the most important thing is more exact forecast how the freight rate would move. Therefore, in this study, analysed how various shipping environmental factors have been influencing on the freight rate for last 8-9 years and the study was aimed to help forecasting the changes of future freight rate and cope with the fluctuation of freight rate. Tramp shipping is often limited to dry bulk shipping market and this study dealt with only dry bulk freight rate.
In shipping there are four shipping markets trading in different commodities. The freight market trades sea transport, the sale and purchase market trades second-hand ships, the newbuilding market trades new ships and the demolition market deals in scrap ships. Because the same shipowners are trading in all four shipping markets their activities are closely correlated and the whole commercial process is controlled and co-ordintaed by cashflow between markets and the cashflow makes shipping cycles.
Shipping demand is derived from international trade which can shift goods to the place where the goods will be more valuable, so the demand sensitively reacts to changes of international economic environment which causes changes of seaborne trade volume. The supply is controlled by the volume of newbuilding ships' delivery and deletion due to demolition, losses, lay-up, and so on. Also, the changes of international bunker price and other changes of external environment can influence on the freight rate of tramp shipping.
Found several factors influencing on the dry bulk freight rate in demand, supply and other external environment through literature review and 8 hypotheses were made. Executed the linear regression analysis between BDI and each factors respectively and correlation analysis to prove these hypotheses.
The regression result explains that the demands factors such as steel production and seaborne trade volume of iron ore and coal are positively related to Baltic Dry Index(BDI) which is being used most widely to represent dry bulk freight rate. That is, the increase of demand factors can cause the rise of freight rate. However the regression equations show that the delivery of newbuilding ships has positive relation with BDI and the deletion of ships are negatively related to BDI which are opposite results to the both hypotheses. The result of the second-hand ship price, bunker price and FFA index shows positive relation which these rises also cause the rise of freight rate. Through the correlation analysis found that the change of FFA market has the most effect on the freight rate followed by second-hand ship price, then the demand factors and bunker price. The supply factors shows relatively lower correlation to the freight rate.
The BDI stood between 2,000 points and 6,000 points volatilely in between 2003 and 2005 and the index has been showing a surge especially in second half of 2006 and 2007 changing historical record of the highest point almost everyday even over 10,000 points while BDI were staying in very low level around 1000 to 2000 points in earlier years. The higher level of freight rate makes shipowners order more newbuilding ships and delay demolition of old ships in order to be more profitable in the firm freight market. Also, the stiff rise of freight rate for last 5 years can be explained by the inelastic shipping supply, it is impossible for the supply to increase so quickly as the demand increases because it takes at least 2-3 years to complete newbuilding ships from the time of order and there are only a few shipyard to build proper newbuilding vessels. That is why a certain increase of shipping demand especially due to high demand of raw material from China can cause the sharp rise of freight rate.
Finally, found that the freight rate is much more sensitively being reacted by the demand and other external factors rather than the supply and recent freight market is difficult to be explained by change of the supply.