Precious Shipping falls $10.3m into the red for Q1

The company's $10.3m loss for the first quarter compares to a $4.2m profit in the same period last year where rates were more favourable.

Average earnings for handysize carriers stood at $9,024 per day in Q1 2014, falling to $5,815 per day a year later. Similarly supramaxes were down from $10,086 per day to $7,380 per day.

The company's fleet though did manage to outperform the Baltic indices for both handysize and supramaxes, by 9% and 15% respectively.

First quarter Chinese coal imports were around 49m tonnes, giving an annual total of 196m tonnes, a drop of almost a third from the 291m tonnes important in 2014. Chinese Iron ore imports were also down, but marginally, as steel production slowed.

Some good news was to be found in the scrapping figures, where 31 handysize ships were scrapped in the first quarter and only five were added to the global fleet. Precious Shipping expects that a continued depressed market could lead to shrinkage of between three and five percent in he handysize sector, eating away at the oversupply caused by recent over-ordering of tonnage.

Precious' fleet rejuvenation continues, with 23 deliveries expected over the coming year, and a series of ship disposals expected over the same period.

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