The news that Russia’s Ministry of Defense has announced it will close the waters leading to the Kerch Strait to non-Russian military and other non-commercial vessels is ominous. I feel a sense of foreboding, not just for Ukraine, but for shipping in general.   My immediate reaction was that this a pre-cursor to Russia taking…

I have to admit that I have overlooked Algeria for most of my life. I think I may have flown over it once or twice, but apart from that it hasn’t figured in my consciousness at all. It sits there in the north west of Africa, more or less minding its own business, and until…

Well, I missed it. I was probably too busy. But I noticed that Bloomberg had a briefing entitled Will Dry Bulk Finally Deliver? yesterday and its very existence is significant to our market. One of the graphs that I look at again and again is the following by transport geographer Jean Paul Rodrigue: Now granted,…

It is sometimes good to remind ourselves that we do not know everything, and the assumptions that we make are not only misguided but completely wrong. We know so little, still so very little, about how the world around us works that the stronger someone asserts their case, whether it is on the markets, or…

This week I have become a small-time media star, and found the experience at turns enjoyable and unnerving. I was asked to speak by both Intergr8, the bunker traders, and BIMCO, the maritime organisation in Copenhagen on the current state of the dry bulk market. I found out a few things about myself: –         I find…

I must admit I’m not in the best of moods today. I should be: the sun is shining, there is a smell of spring in the air, I have delivered a ship this week, and although I missed out on another, in the end it was all part of the slings and arrows of the…

I have been without Benedetta, my beloved red Vespa, for most of this week. I knew that we would have to spend some time apart, because the signs were there. Maybe we needed some space, some time alone, but she had been complaining for some weeks now. The little red light showing excess temperature had…

It’s a sign of the times that the only time I managed to get any time for reflection was earlier this afternoon in the dentist’s chair. The good news was that I managed to escape root canal work, for now at least. The bad news is I had someone digging around in my mouth for…

It would be nice if such platitudes were true in the ship sale and purchase market, but life is just not like that. In the last couple of weeks, the dry bulk market has boomed, and ship sale and purchase activity is booming too: the broking community is almost feverish with excitement. The new supercycle…

One pandemic that has been overlooked in the last few months, for understandable reasons, is the African Swine Fever outbreak which has caused the untimely, and unproductive end of 100 million pigs since August 2018, either by dying from the disease, or being culled and disposed of to avoid it spreading further. 100 million pigs.…