WORLD IRON ORE TRADE AND SHIPPING REQUIREMENTS

It has been established, with reasonable certainty, that world seaborne trade in iron ore will effectively double over the remainder of the 1970's, rising to around 500 million tons/year. The growth of the trade will clearly mean a greatly increased demand for shipping, requirements rising even faster than the volume of trade because of a further increase in average shipping distances. Even so, it is by no means certain that the increased demand for ships to transport iron ore and the other major dry bulk commodities will be large enough to justify the rapid growth of the world bulk and combined carrier fleets which is taking place. The iron ore trade cannot be viewed in isolation, despite the influence it has on the shipping market and the availability of the larger ships. Recent years have seen a progressive increase in the sizes of bulk and combined carriers employed in the main trades, with the bigger ships steadily increasing their share of total seaborne movements. This trend will obviously continue through to 1980, although some consolidation of bulk vessel sizes can be expected in certain trades because of the slow pace of port developments, notably at the discharging end. However, bulk carriers and OBO's of 50,000 DWT upward already predominate in almost all the longhaul iron ore trades, the preferred size in many cases being over 100,000 DWT. On the other hand, the very big ore/oil carriers are restricted to only a few routes and it is premature to talk of 200,000 tonners becoming the standard class for long-haul movements by the early 1980's. Ship size is within the reference terms of this report, but not the question of the overall demand for bulk carriers and OBO's. Certain conclusions about the shipping requirements of the iron ore trades have been drawn from the recently-published "World Bulk Carrier Market". This survey-available from H.P. Drewry (Shipping Consultants) Ltd.-contains an in-depth analysis of bulk carrier requirements by commodity and trade, the forecasts distinguishing between six different bulk carrier size groups.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Price is approximately $96.00 for a series of ten reports.
• Corporate Authors:

  Drewry (HP) (Shipping Consultants) Limited

  Palladium House, 1-4 Argyll Street
  London W1V 1AD,   England 
• Publication Date: 0

Media Info

• Pagination: 52 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Economic forecasting; Ore carriers; Research; Shipping
• Old TRIS Terms: Shipping forecasts; Shipping research
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Economics; Marine Transportation; Research;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00050701
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Drewry (HP) (Shipping Consultants) Limited
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jan 24 1974 12:00AM