India’s The Great Eastern Shipping (GE Shipping) has earmarked up to $50m over the next four years to upgrade its fleet for compliance with IMO’s regulations on low-sulphur fuels and ballast water treatment systems (BWTS).

The global dry bulk shipping market is expected to see flat rates and a marginal fleet growth in 2019, with potential near-term positive prospect following a temporary truce in trade war between China and US.

Dry bulk shipowner Pacific Basin has closed a $40m seven-year term loan facility with Danish Ship Finance.

Hong Kong-listed Courage Investment Group is spending $10.88m to buy a secondhand supramax bulk carrier in a move to expand the scale of its shipowning business.

Hong Kong’s family-owned shipowner Wah Kwong has approached China’s Chengxi Shipyard to construct a pair of 82,000-dwt dry bulk carriers.

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) will continue to stay under pressure as shipowners are not scrapping enough vessels even as demand has grown, pointing to a slow market recovery up until 2020, warned Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping.

Jinhui Holdings has purchased an office unit in Hong Kong as part of its continuing divestment of its exposure to the shipping business.

Digitalisation, now permeating all aspects of shipping, was central to almost every discussion and panel over Shipping Insight’s three-day span at its 2018 conference in Stamford, Connecticut in US last week.

The Capesize market saw a correction this week and prompted the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) to fall below 1,500 points.

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) was off to a good start this week as the index pushed toward the 1,740 readings, thanks to the positive market sentiments from the higher freight derivative markets.