Cement moves on the same ships as grain, coal and steel, so when the Baltic Exchange sits down with Howe Robinson Partners to talk about the next few years of dry bulk shipping, cargo owners in every other commodity should be listening. That conversation happened at the INTERCEM Shipping Forum in Naples. Jos Standerwick, the Baltic's Head of Membership, joined Howe Robinson's Dimitrios Georgantis and Simon Cox on stage to work through the forces likely to reshape freight markets and trade flows over the coming years. If you book tonnage or buy FOB, the panel was aimed at you.
What Happened
INTERCEM runs its shipping forum for the cement and clinker trade, a segment that lives almost entirely on handysize and supramax bulkers. Standerwick represented the Baltic Exchange, the body whose daily indices settle a large share of the world's dry bulk freight derivatives. Georgantis and Cox came from Howe Robinson Partners, one of the larger shipbroking houses; Cox also sits on the Baltic Membership Council, so he arrived with a foot in both camps.
The discussion covered where dry bulk demand is heading, how trade flows are being redrawn, and what that combination does to freight markets. Nothing about this panel was a rate announcement. It was the kind of forward view that brokers and index providers share with the people who have to commit to cargo months out, and the cement trade in particular has been rerouting steadily as new grinding capacity comes online closer to end markets.
Impact on Freight Rates and Operations
Cement and clinker compete for the same small and mid-size bulkers as grain, fertiliser, steel and aggregates. There is no dedicated cement fleet of any scale. When agricultural demand pulls supramaxes into the Atlantic, cement charterers in the Mediterranean and Gulf feel it within weeks, and the reverse holds too.
The second thing that matters here is distance. Trade flows that shift from short-sea to deep-sea absorb far more tonne-miles per tonne shipped, which tightens the effective fleet without a single ship leaving service. A cargo that used to move 400 miles and now moves 3,000 ties up the same vessel for roughly seven times as long. That is why panels like this one spend more time on routing than on ship counts.
For anyone shipping containerised or breakbulk building materials alongside bulk parcels, the read-across is direct. Firm bulker earnings pull marginal cargo into boxes, box demand firms, and your LCL and FCL quotes follow a few weeks later.
What Shippers Should Do
- Price your densest cargo first. Handysize and supramax tonnage serves cement, clinker, aggregates and grain at the same time. A firm quarter in any one of them drags the rest up with it.
- Check the Baltic indices before you sign, not after. The handysize and supramax indices publish daily. If your contract escalator tracks a monthly average, you are settling against last month's market while today's is already moving.
- Re-run weight and volume for every box. Dense building materials hit the payload ceiling long before they fill the cube, and paying for air you cannot legally load is the most common avoidable cost in this trade.
- Ask your broker about port rotation and waiting time. Congestion at load ports turns into demurrage on your invoice, not into freight, and it rarely shows up in the headline rate you were quoted.
Key Takeaway
Dry bulk rates for cement are set by what grain, coal and steel are doing at the same moment, so build your shipping budget around fleet-wide tonne-mile demand rather than your own commodity's outlook.
Plan Your Shipment: Use our free CBM Calculator, Chargeable Weight Calculator, and Container Load Calculator for your next shipment.
Source: Hellenic Shipping News