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This special edition of The Baltic magazine concentrates on the Asia-Pacific shipping industries. Although it comes at a particularly difficult time for the region, the fact remains that the Asia Pacific is vital for world shipping, and is an important driver of the world economy.

With the Baltic Exchange at its hub, London is the world’s major provider of maritime services. This wide range of professional support and advice is used in all four corners of the globe. Maritime lawyers, insurers, financiers, arbitrators and shipbrokers provide vital services to an industry which is increasingly shifting eastwards. Shipbuilding is largely the province of Japanese, Korean and increasingly Chinese yards, and Pacific Rim owners now account for around 45% of the world’s tonnage. And now, as with other industries, we are witnessing an eastwards expansion of a number of western maritime service companies seeking to align themselves geographically with their clients.

While there has always been a strong maritime community in Hong Kong and Singapore, these traditional centres are now being challenged by cities such as Bangkok and particularly Shanghai.

It’s interesting to see that a number of Baltic members have recently opened offices in Shanghai, and that the Exchange itself has seen its fledgling Chinese membership grow over the past year or so. This must be, at least in part, a reflection of the huge increase in Chinese demand for raw materials, as well as their fast-growing newbuildings industry. In terms of imports alone, last year saw a massive jump to 10.8 million tonnes, compared with just 2.5 million tonnes in 2001.

The Baltic in the Asia Pacific
A growing international maritime service industry in the Asia-Pacific region has sparked a need for these companies to investigate Baltic membership. The Exchange’s reach is global. Facilitated by huge improvements in communications and information technology, members are now able to tap into the wide range of benefits provided the Exchange provides for its members at the click of a mouse.

Baltic indices
At the centre of the Exchange lies our daily reporting on the freight market. We now produce six indices each day comprising 39 individual route assessments, including a number involving Chinese and Far East trade. These are universally accepted as market indicators upon which shipping decisions are made and physical and derivative contracts settled.

Added to this, the Ex-change produces a range of reports and commentaries updated daily. But Baltic membership is much more than information. In a largely unregulated industry, the Baltic Exchange provides an established framework of self-regulation within which our members operate. This provides comfort to their business partners, clients and principals, who can work with them safe in the knowledge that they are dealing with an honest, trustworthy and credible organisation. Part and parcel of self-regulation is our capacity to mediate, informally, in commercial disputes between members and non-members, a service which brings our members around US$2-3m a year in unpaid commissions and other outstanding debts.

These days, it doesn’t really matter where an organisation is based, as long as its ambition and attitude is global. The Baltic Exchange sits in London but our members operate from around 50 locations globally. This, coupled with the wide-range of services we are able to project around the world, makes the Exchange ever more relevant – to London, America, Europe, Scandinavia and, of course, the Asia-Pacific region.

Website: www.balticexchange.com

www.balticexchange.com