Neptune Atlas

Matching

Matching a cargo to a ship

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A cargo enquiry is one list and a position list is the other, and the job of a broking desk is the join between them. It looks like a database query and it is not one. Five of the constraints are arithmetic, three are somebody’s opinion, and the ones that eliminate a ship fastest are rarely the ones a newcomer looks at first.

The cargo

A realistic dry cargo enquiry. The figures are illustrative and market numbers move; the shape does not.

CHTRS : FIRST CLASS SHIPPERS, FULL STYLE ON FIRM
30,000 MT 5 PCT MOLOO CEMENT CLINKER IN BULK, SF ABT 26
1 SB KANDLA
1 SB KRISHNAPATNAM
LAYCAN 08/14 OCT
FIOST BENDS
10,000 MT PWWD SSHINC LOAD / 6,000 MT PWWD SSHINC DISCH
DEM USD 14,000 PDPR / DES HALF DEM BENDS
MAX 20 YRS, GEARED WITH GRABS REQUIRED

The tonnage

And five lines off the morning’s circulars, already filtered down to the ones lying anywhere near the load area.

MV OCEAN PRIDE    28,400 DWT  2009  GEARED 4x30T  OPEN FUJAIRAH  04/07 OCT
MV HAN RUN        32,900 DWT  2004  GEARED 4x30T  OPEN SINGAPORE 06/09 OCT
MV BRIGHT SAKURA  33,700 DWT  2013  GEARLESS      OPEN KANDLA    09/11 OCT
MV ALKA STAR      37,500 DWT  2016  GEARED 4x35T  OPEN MUNDRA    07/10 OCT
MV NORDIC TERN    56,800 DWT  2015  GEARED 4x30T  OPEN COLOMBO   05/08 OCT

One of those five is a candidate. Working out which one, and being able to say why the other four are not, is the skill.

A large part of this information still arrives through tonnage circulars, which require the broker to interpret the vessel’s position and availability.

The filters that are arithmetic

1. Intake, not deadweight

Deadweight is what a ship can carry in total, and cargo is only part of it. Bunkers, fresh water, stores, and the ship’s constants all come out of the same number before a tonne of clinker goes aboard. As a working rule of thumb a bulk carrier loads somewhere around 93 per cent of her summer deadweight, and on a long voyage with full bunkers it is less than that.

So the quantity has to be turned into a deadweight before the list can be filtered, and the tolerance decides which end you size against. 5 PCT MOLOO is more or less in owner’s option: the owner declares the exact figure inside 28,500 to 31,500, so strictly the ship needs only to lift the bottom of that range, about 30,600 dwt at 93 per cent intake. A ship that can lift the top of it wants about 33,900. Had the enquiry read MOLCHOPT, with the charterer declaring, only the top figure would matter.

In practice a broker offers into the middle of that. A charterer writing 30,000 wants 30,000 moved, and an owner who declares the minimum on a ship that could barely reach it is offering a weaker ship than the one that lifts the full stem. Call the useful band 31,000 to 34,000 and be ready to defend either edge.

The other edge of the band is economic rather than physical. A ship far larger than the cargo can obviously lift it, and the freight is then being paid on deadweight the charterer is not using, so she is beaten by anything closer to the stem. A common working ceiling is around one and a half times the quantity.

2. Cube, when the cargo is light

The stowage factor is the space one tonne of the cargo occupies. Clinker at about 26 is dense: she reaches her marks long before the holds are full, so deadweight is the binding constraint and the grain capacity on her particulars never comes into it.

Reverse the cargo and the constraint moves. A grain cargo at a stowage factor near 48 fills the holds first, and the ship cubes out with deadweight to spare. At that point the size class tells you nothing useful and the answer is on the particulars: grain and bale capacity, hold by hold. Two hulls of identical deadweight can differ by thousands of tonnes of intake on a light cargo.

3. Draught, at both ends

Every port has a maximum arrival or sailing draught, and a tidal port has one that changes through the day. Kandla is in a tidal gulf, so the sailing draught and the tidal window are the first things to check on a stem of this size, and a ship perfectly capable of lifting the cargo may not be able to leave with it aboard.

Water density matters here too. A ship floats deeper in brackish or fresh water than in salt for the same weight, which is why an enquiry names salt water or brackish water arrival draught. The difference between them is cargo, sometimes a great deal of it.

4. Gear

The enquiry says GEARED WITH GRABS REQUIRED, which means the discharge berth has no shore cranes for this cargo or the charterer does not intend to pay for them. A gearless ship is out, however well she fits everything else. Where gear is required, the safe working load and whether grabs are aboard are both worth confirming, because cranes rated for bagged cargo are not the same proposition as cranes working clinker with grabs all day.

The reverse also appears: GEARLESS ACCEPTABLE on an enquiry is an invitation, because a gearless ship of the same size is usually cheaper and the charterer is saying the terminal can handle her.

5. The dates, with the ballast leg attached

The laycan is 08 to 14 October: the ship may not be tendered before the eighth and the charterer may cancel if she has not presented by the fourteenth. What has to be compared against it is not the position date but the position date plus the steaming time to the load port.

That is the arithmetic newcomers skip. A ship open Singapore on the sixth is roughly two and a half thousand miles from Kandla, which at a normal laden speed is the better part of ten days of steaming. She arrives after the cancelling date and she was never a candidate, whatever her particulars say. A ship open at Mundra on the tenth is a few hours away and comfortably inside the window.

The ballast leg costs money as well as time, and it is charged to this fixture even though it earns nothing. A better rate two thousand miles away frequently produces a worse daily return than an ordinary rate on a cargo the ship is nearly alongside. That comparison is what a voyage estimate is for.

The filters that are somebody’s opinion

The rest of the shortlist is cut by judgement, and it is worth being explicit about which is which because these are the ones that get argued.

Five ships, one candidate

ShipVerdictWhy
OCEAN PRIDEOut 28,400 dwt gives an intake around 26,400. She cannot lift even the bottom of the tolerance.
HAN RUNOut Size and gear are right, but she is over the age limit and she is ten days of steaming from the load port against a window that closes on the fourteenth. Two independent reasons.
BRIGHT SAKURAOut The best fit on the list and already lying at Kandla, and she is gearless. One line of the enquiry removes her.
ALKA STAROffer her Inside the band, geared with grabs, four years old, open next door on the tenth. Check her sailing draught for Kandla and confirm the grabs.
NORDIC TERNOut Capable of the cargo and nearly twice the size of it. A Supramax against a Handysize stem loses on freight to anything closer to the quantity.

Five lines to one offer is normal, and a shortlist that stays long usually means a filter has not been applied yet. It is also why coverage matters more than analysis: the desk that had eleven ships in the area that morning had a real choice, and the desk that had three did not.

What a database can and cannot do for you

Most of section one above is genuinely mechanical and a search should do it. Three things get in the way, and all three are worth knowing about whatever you use.

26,254

Hulls in the register that carry an IMO number and no deadweight at all, out of 101,850. A deadweight filter drops every one of them silently, so a search that looks complete is missing a fifth of the register unless it says so.

Positions carry an area, not a berth. Circulars are written as OPEN WC INDIA or OPEN AG far more often than they name a port, so filtering open tonnage on an exact load port throws away almost everything. The workable unit is the trading region, because a region is what a ship ballasts within.

The availability constraint nobody holds is drydock. A hull committed to a special survey is not open for a voyage that overlaps it, however good her position looks. It is knowable months in advance and it appears on no position list.

What follows is a division of labour rather than an argument for or against software. Turn the quantity into a band, filter on region, laycan overlap, gear, age and draught, and you are down from a few hundred hulls to a handful in seconds. Deciding which of the handful the charterer will take, and which owner will actually trade, is the part that is still the job.

For brokers doing this across multiple cargo enquiries and open positions, software built for ship brokers can help bring vessel search, cargo matching and follow-up into one workspace.

References

How to read a cargo enquiryThe e-mail saying a charterer needs something moved, walked field by field, and why an enquiry is not an offer. How to read a tonnage circularThe open-tonnage e-mail: the fields, the abbreviations that ride on the line, and why the ship's name is the hard part. Dry bulk vessel sizesHandysize to Capesize: where the deadweight bands sit, why the boundaries are conventions, and how many hulls are in each. Reading a ship's particularsWhat each figure on a vessel description constrains, why GRT is a volume, and why draught excludes a ship long before deadweight does. What a ship can actually liftA 58,000 deadweight ship does not lift 58,000 tonnes, and at a shallow berth she may not lift 52,000. The arithmetic nobody does in their head.

Neptune Atlas

In Neptune Atlas an enquiry's quantity and tolerance become a deadweight band, searched against the positions on file in the load port's trading region and overlapping the laycan. The band and the region are printed on the result with the reasoning behind them, so a broker who knows a hull belongs on the list can widen the search instead of wondering why she is missing from it. Every paid plan starts with 7 free days. A card is needed to start them, and cancelling before they end costs nothing.

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