4 American Journal of Transportation American Journal of Transportation ajot.com W W W . P O R T T B . C O M • Closest port to Florida’s largest and fastest growing market • Nearly 500,000 SF of on-dock warehouse space • More than 7,000 feet of berth • Florida’s largest steel port • Expanding lumber, perishable, container, project cargo, and heavy-lift business • Expanded container services with Central America, South America, Mexico, and Asia • Six post-Panamax gantry cranes DISTRIBUTION HUB FLORIDA’S BREAKBULK by wind and renewables demand that holds up even in conservative scenarios, reinforced by AI-driven energy infrastructure spending and continued oil and gas investment. His bigger worry, he said, lies else- where in shipping — segments he sees as over-or- dered — rather than in MPP, where he estimated the order book at a comparatively modest 12-13% of the existing fleet. The panel offered differing views on what kind of ship actually wins in that environment — and here the range on stage was extraordinary, running from Stolyarov’s 5,200-dwt parcel tonnage to Kuźmicki’s 60,000-dwt-plus wood-pulp carriers. Chipolbrok’s answer to Asia’s structural trade imbalance — full ships moving project cargo from Asia to Europe and the U.S., with comparatively little project cargo on the return leg — has been to lean on larger vessels. “We realize that we need bigger ships, like the 60,000-deadweight vessels,” Kuźmicki said, explaining that the extra capacity lets Chipolbrok backhaul dry bulk cargo, 50,000- 55,000 tonnes at a time, before repositioning to proj- ect-rich regions. At the same time, the company continues to invest in smaller, 38,000-dwt heavy-lift vessels car- rying 700-tonne cranes and 77-meter hatch openings — tonnage he was careful to note doesn’t compete with the smaller operators on the panel. “I would say everyone is doing his own market,” he said. Bunk argued the market remains large enough for vessels in the 10,000-20,000-dwt range — the space Auerbach and Baosheng occupy — to coex- ist alongside the 60,000-tonne wood-pulp trade. “There’s certain cargo — often sole cargo, last- in-first-out — where you just need to be at a spe- cific spot, where the 60Ks just cannot compete,” he said, ruling out any move by Auerbach into larger tonnage. “I don’t see a crowd-out effect where the larger you go, the better placed you are.” VARAMAR’s model, Stolyarov explained, starts from what the customer needs to move at any given moment rather than from a fixed ship type, and that flexibility is easiest to deliver with tonnage in the 5,000-10,000-dwt “sweet spot” — though not exclusively; the company will use anything up to a Handysize or Supramax, occasionally a Panamax, when the cargo calls for it. “It’s much less commod- itized compared to the big bulk trades or the con- tainer trades,” he said, arguing that price stability in MPP rewards companies combining competitive parceling with technical expertise. That logic also underpinned VARAMAR’s recently announced move into shipowning, and Stolyarov confirmed the rationale on stage: “We felt that the timing was right to invest in some of the ships that we were comfortable operating, simply because we know many different uses for those types of ships and we have proven able to operate them better than the market.” The operator model remains the core of the business, he stressed — ownership simply gives VARAMAR and its partners “a bit of a backbone” on trades where clients value consis- tency of tonnage. Capt. Yang Lei offered the panel’s most dis- tinctly Asian perspective, describing a business that started with small, gearless 2,000-8,000-dwt general cargo vessels before Singapore-based Baos- heng moved into 12,000-dwt geared ships and, eventually, its own 14,000-dwt newbuildings when it couldn’t source the tonnage its charterers wanted from the open market. European operators then began chartering Baos- heng vessels for worldwide trading, pushing the com- pany toward a “real” MPP design shaped directly by charterer input. “Some of our European colleagues here today might say it’s not really MPP,” Yang said. “But to us, it’s a big one.” Baosheng’s expansion, he added, is investment-driven rather than speculative: reliable charter commitments, not ambition alone, (CASE – continued on page 6) (CASE – continued from page 2) Chipolbrok’s MV BOYM discharging in Mulgrave, Canada.
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