Bulk carriers have slowed both their ballast and laden sailing speeds since 2015, showing the sector is still plagued by overcapacity despite low fleet growth, says Alphabulk.
Its researchers agency used AIS data from AXS Marine to look at trends for bulk carriers of over 15,000 dwt and the commodities carried.
“The bulk shipping market will not switch from famine to feast until the capacity hidden through slow speeding is released back into the market, i.e. until the speed of the fleet moves closer to its design speed,” the research firm said in its weekly report on Thursday.
“This low level of speeding represents probably close to 15% of overcapacity, which is a permanent threat to any potential decent recovery.”
Between 2015 and 2018, a laden bulk carrier’s average speed declined by 1% from approximately 11.19 to 11.08 knots.
The average ballast speed fell by 0.7% from roughly 11.69 to 11.60 knots over the same period, according to Alphabulk.
The deceleration has become more pronounced since 2017, the analysis found.
A 0.5% average decrease was seen during the period 2017-18 for both laden and ballast speeds.
The fleet of bulkers of over 15,000 dwt continues to increase in number and during 2018 undertook more voyages year on year, carrying ever greater cargo volumes, the research found.
Alphabulk’s research tallied 11,137 unique vessels within this group during 2018, which is 0.64% more than in 2017 and 3.13% more than in 2015.
Since 2015, the fleet has shown a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.77%, while the number of voyages performed has had a CAGR of 3.24%.
Meanwhile, the annual growth of cargo volumes is outpacing both of these metrics, the research found.
“While most were forecasting an increase of 2% year-on-year in cargo volumes, our AIS data show a much higher increase of 2.95% year-on-year,” Alphabulk noted in the report.
“The total number of tons carried in 2018 is up 13.9% compared to 2015, or a CAGR of 3.3%, which is considerably more than the CAGR of the fleet over the same period.”
