Bulk cargo
Commodity cargo transported unpackaged in large quantities
Bulk cargo is product cargo that is transported unpackaged in large quantities.
01Description
Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular, particulate (as a mass of relatively small solids) form, such as petroleum/crude oil, grain, coal, or gravel. This cargo is usually dropped or poured, with a spout or shovel bucket, into a bulk carrier ship's hold, railroad car/railway wagon, or tanker truck/trailer/semi-trailer body. Smaller quantities can be boxed (or drummed) and palletised; cargo packaged in this manner is referred to as breakbulk cargo. Bulk cargo is classified as wet or dry.
The Baltic Exchange is based in London and provides a range of indices benchmarking the cost of moving bulk commodities, dry and wet, along popular routes around the seas. Some of these indices are also used to settle Freight Futures, known as FFA's. The most famous of the Baltic indices is the Baltic Dry Indices, commonly called the BDI. This is a derived function of the Baltic Capesize index (BCI), Baltic Panamax index (BPI), Baltic Supramax index (BSI) and the Baltic Handysize index (BHSI). The BDI has been used as a bellwether for the global economy as it can be interpreted as an indicator of an increase or decrease in the amount of raw commodities countries are importing/exporting.
02Dry
Dry bulk is any cargo carried in bulk in solid form. Such carriage is often referred to as the "dry" trades. They would include:
- Bauxite
- Bulk minerals (sand, gravel, copper, limestone, salt)
- Cements
- Chemicals (fertilizer, plastic granules and pellets, resin powder, synthetic fiber)
- Coals and cokes
- Agricultural products such as dry edibles (for animals or humans: alfalfa pellets, citrus pellets, livestock feed, flour, peanuts, raw or refined sugar, seeds or starches.)
- Grains (wheat, maize, rice, barley, oats, rye, sorghum, soybeans, etc.)
- Iron (ferrous and non-ferrous ores, ferroalloys, pig iron, scrap metal, pelletized taconite)
- Wood chips
03Wet
Liquid bulk cargo includes any cargo carried in closed tanks and poured or pumped into the carrying vessel, such as:
04Specialized large ports
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Bulk cargo”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Mini-bulker loading scrap iron.jpg by Hervé Cozanet, CC BY-SA 3.0
- TILX290344.JPG by NorthWoodsHiawatha, Attribution
- LightningVolt Iron Ore Pellets.jpg by Photo by Lars Lentz, CC BY-SA 1.0
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