Diana Shipping has chartered a capesize bulker for more than a year at a daily rate that beats market assessments.
The New York-listed owner has fixed the 177,773-dwt New York (built 2010) for 16 to 18 months at $16,000 per day to SwissMarine. The charter is expected to begin on Sunday and make $7.54m in revenue for the minimum period of the fixture.
Diana, which owns 42 bulkers, has fixed the vessel above Clarksons’ 2 June assessment of $13,250 per day for a one-year charter of a 170,000-dwt capesize.
But the fixture’s daily rate is much less than the $23,000 per day that the ship earned during a prior one-year charter to C Transport Maritime that ended on Sunday.
The capesize market was doing much better when the C Transport Maritime charter began on 2 July 2022 as Clarksons assessed the daily time charter rate for a 170,000 dwt capesize at $19,850 per day at that time.
But the SwissMarine fixture’s daily time charter rate for the New York is much higher than the Baltic Exchange’s Capesize 5TC set of spot-rate averages across five key routes that averaged $11,470 per day on Tuesday after rising 17.5% since Monday.
Diana’s other 10 capesizes are fixed on nine multimonth charters that are set to expire anywhere from August 2023 to December 2024 and one multiyear fixture that began in late March 2022 and could end as late as late May 2027.
Diana’s best-paying time charter at the moment is the fixture of the 180,960-dwt New Orleans 2015) to Engelhart CTP Freight from late March 2022 to late November 2023 to late January 2024 at $32,000 per day.
