Miller Magazine Issue: 145 January 2022

65 COVER STORY MILLER / january 2022 MOST SELLERS SINCE START 2021: ‘FOB ONLY’ The increase of coaster freights is well noted since June 2021. One month before the MY 2021/22 freight to Marma- ra jumped by $10. More and more sellers, when negotiat- ing deals, started telling, that they are offering “FOB only”. Of course, most buyers were not ready to take freight risk, thus they switched to spot trading. MOST SPOT BUYERS IN 2021/22: ‘HAS SELLER A VESSEL IN HANDS?’ Such a hike in freights shook the range of sellers and put many to the black lists, as not all escaped the temp- tation to default. Even the biggest and the strongest were thinking, how to avoid performing some deals. After having bad experience, buyers, when negotiating deals, started to specify, whether seller has vessel in hands. Many market participants could remember, that the last three seasons we lost the seasonality of price movements. There is no more “harvest pressure” periods, no predictability. This factor led coaster CIF trading to spot deals. And spot had a meaning of about 5-20 days since the deal was done. Freight spike since 2021/22 made the meaning of spot to be even up to 5-15 days.