Global Shipping and dry-bulk Market Overview
Global shipping remains the backbone of international commerce, moving more than 80% of world trade volume; and its underlying demand has proven resilient despite cyclical shocks1.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), seaborne trade volumes reached approximately 12+ billion tons in 2023, while global fleet capacity continued to expand, albeit at a moderate pace following pandemic-era supply chain dislocations. Demand growth is primarily correlated with global industrial production, energy consumption, and agricultural trade flows, while supply is influenced by newbuilding deliveries, scrapping rates, shipyard capacity, regulatory compliance (e.g., decarbonization standards), and access to capital2.
Key Metric: Seaborne trade volumes reached approximately 12+ billion tons in 2023, with distance-adjusted trade growing faster at c.+4.2% YoY, reflecting longer routing and shifting trade patterns.
Importantly, supply in shipping is relatively inelastic in the short term due to multi-year construction lead times, creating pronounced cyclical volatility when demand deviates from expectations. Over the medium term, UNCTAD projects maritime trade growth in the low-single-digit range, broadly aligned with global GDP expansion, while fleet growth remains constrained by shipyard bottlenecks and environmental retrofitting requirements—factors that may temper oversupply risk relative to prior cycles.
In volume terms, global maritime trade rebounded to c.12.3 billion tons in 2023 (+2.4% YoY), with distance-adjusted trade (ton-miles) growing faster (c.+4.2% YoY), reflecting longer routing and shifting trade patterns.
UNCTAD projects c.2% annual growth over 2026–2030, consistent with a “moderate growth, higher volatility” regime driven by geopolitics, rerouting, and policy fragmentation. Within this, dry bulk has structurally gained share: UNCTAD data show dry bulk commodities rising from c.27% of seaborne trade in 2000 to c.36% in 2023, underpinned by iron ore, coal, grains, and other industrial/agri inputs.
We project dry bulk seaborne volumes to grow c.1.5–2.5% yearly over a medium-term horizon, under the following assumptions:
seaborne trade growth growing proportionally to global activity (real GDP/trade), a
OECD global GDP c.2.9% in 2026, c.3.1% in 2027
conservative elasticity of 0.6–0.8x from GDP to seaborne dry bulk volumes (reflecting that bulk demand is GDP-linked but dampened by efficiency, energy transition, and substitution),
dry bulk’s share broadly stable around the low-to-mid-30% range.
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