MID-SHIP Petcoke Report – Jan 30, 2025
January 30, 2025
Market overview:
Today’s observance of the Australia Day holiday and this week’s Lunar New Year celebration—the year of the Snake, symbolizing Wisdom, intelligence, and insight, and most meaningful (hopefully) for the freight market is “renewal and transformation” for China in 2025—set the stage last week and this week for low levels of activity and a declining spot market for all sizes.
Market fundamentals remain unchanged, remaining under pressure, and the downward trend continues with little sign of any change. Sentiment remains weak in the short term. Look for positional volatility in the coming days as vessel operators attempt to queue up a rally post-holiday. Time will tell.
Container rates continue declining; current rates are the lowest in six months. Major container operators, like Maersk and others, indicate that while monitoring developments in the Middle East, they do not intend to restart Suez/Red Sea transits for the time being.
In the news, in December 2024, the world crude steel production for the 71 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (World Steel) was 144.5 million tons, a 5.6% increase compared to December 2023. China produced 76.0 million metric tons in December 2024, up 11.8% on December 2023. India produced 13.6 million metric tons up 9.5%.
Severe weather is disrupting vessel traffic and bunkering today in Gibraltar. The region is experiencing strong winds and heavy waves, leading to disruption and delay for vessels and fuel suppliers. Rough weather conditions are expected to continue through Thursday this week.
The financial markets in the U.S. were rocked today by a so-called “Sputnik moment” in AI, with the revelation of a significant breakthrough by the Chinese AI startup Deepseek and their introduction of an open-source AI model called R1. This model is a potential game-changer due to its efficiency and lower cost than existing models from major players like OpenAI and Meta (millions of dollars in development cost versus hundreds of millions). The event potentially dramatically shifts the landscape of artificial intelligence, much like the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957 did for the space race; the potential for this development to spur increased competition and innovation in the AI field, similar to how Sputnik’s launch spurred the United States to accelerate its space program.
Subscribe below to receive the full report.
