MID-SHIP Alumina/Bauxite – Mar 31, 2025

March 31, 2025

Market Overview: 

While the dust is settling in the aftermath of last week’s U.S. Trade Representative hearing and pending final determination, on Wednesday this week, we await the declaration of reciprocal tariffs on all things by the U.S. Administration. The result has been muted business activity and positional volatility in the spot market, particularly in the U.S.-related trades.

While market sentiment has shown signs of picking up as we start the seasonally higher second quarter, Geopolitical events and economic news cloud the mind. Nevertheless, it’s about moderate fleet growth and likely softer year-over-year cargo volume growth in 2025.

The market opened the new week with flat sentiment across the four segments, which was reflected in the Baltic Indices. Capes were mostly down last week, and the trend looks to continue. The Pacific continues to outperform the Atlantic basin for Panamax, with the time charter average improving by about $1,000 per day overall. Supra traded in a narrow range and was down to the end of the past week.

The Eid al-Fitr (Hari Raya Aidilfitri) marks the end of Ramadan in 2025 based on the sighting of the crescent moon March 31/April 1 and was affecting trading in the Middle East and shipping hub Singapore to start this week.

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