Study On Panamax Fleet Operating Strategy Of A State-owned Company

As world economy has entered the "financializition" stage, financializition trend of shipping industry is also obvious. The financial crisis triggered by the U.S.economy crisis has brought a huge impact on shipping market and afterwards the dry bulk shipping market is facing a lot of uncertainties beyond control and hard to forecast.As an important part of international dry bulk shipping market, panamax dry bulk carrier (DWT 60,000-100,000), which is widely used to transport coal, ore, grain, fertilizer and even container and oil, is considered to be the best vessel performing voyage from Atlantic to Pacific via Panama Canal, and the most typical one for fleet operation. BPI, which indicates the panamax bulk carrier market trend, has experienced fluctuately increase, higher volatility, sharp decline and a steady recover since July, 2005.It reached the highest historical points of 11,713 on 30th October,2007, and it's only now 2,632 points on July 30th,2010. How to deal with market trends in post-crisis era and determine the future direction of development has become the most concern of shipping companies operating panamax vessels.This paper, by virtue of qualitative and quantitative methods, makes analysis on panamax fleet operating strategy from the view of shipping companies. First of all, it analyzes the status of the world's panamax fleet and makes a market review.Secondly, it introduces the panamax fleet of a state-owned shipping company, summarizes its existing operation problems, and grasps internal and external development environment the company facing. Then supply and demand of the main cargoes (coal, grain and iron ore) are analyzed and a combined forecasting method is used to predict their shipping amount. Strategy and advice for panamax fleet operation are given based on above analysis. Finally, a summary is concluded.