Iron was only 10-14/ton til 2002 when it started r
Post# of 8054
shipping yards kept pumping out ships despite a glut and the great recession so the most abundant classes of ship- Handymax and especially Panamax I believe- were for years being rented for less than their cost just to keep them partially busy as shippers kept levying HUGE impairment costs on their fleets -
but shipping for capesize and perhaps some other sizes are improving-it all depends on China,as you say.
A couple years ago China temporarily stopped domestic coal production due to a bad mining accident,thus increasing the amount of coal they imported,and that brought panamax rates up I remember on the baltic dry index to their cost,which was ca 14000 , but before and after that -after domestic coal production began again,Panamax 's were only bringing 12000 / unit of time -I guess that was daily but either handymax or panamax rented for 1400-1750/day at the point in time when I researched it IF rented for 3 months-
rent is much lower if rent it for a longer period of time-the shortest being 3 months,which CWRN should be able to do at some point and just keep the ship going back and forth between mine and china,unless Navial uses its own ships-they reportedly have a ship division.
Its all in my lengthy Panamax post computations of October 2011, which started when an engineer who works on/builds those ship engines gave me enough info to get started-a dangerous thing some would say.
Some forget that Japan preemptively attacked the USA Dec 7 1941 in an attempt to secure the raw resources/commodities (like iron) necessary to support their society since Japan is relatively resource poor-having to support a large, albeit declining population (they are not having babies and unlike the USA dont have much immigration) in a relatively small land mass-
in fact theres a book on that subject titled "the coming war w japan" to be fought over resources, though the title today would have to be updated to "the current war w china" over resources etc.
thus japans reliance on nuclear power- and shutting down all reactors in the country has really hurt their energy production-so they restarted 2 reactors. Remember they didnt have enough power for the factories so parts for japanese cars and car parts were in short supply in the USA/Europe etc for a while.
So they are going to have to solve the energy equation to prepare for the 2020 olympics also,which they've been trying to do w renewables etc .