Moore Greece, an accounting and consulting firm specialising in the shipping, media and hotel sectors, announces that the Moore Maritime Index “MMI”, a database that contains operating costs and revenues from more than 1,500 vessels, has been updated and is available with the 2019 data.

The data comes from audited financial statements of ship owning companies only, and therefore the results produced by the Index show the “real world” of financial performance of the shipping industry across more than 20 vessel types.

Key findings:

• The Tanker sector performed significantly higher on revenues compared to 2018, with the larger in size vessels benefiting the most from the buoyant 2019 tanker market as the revenues of the Suezmaxes increased by almost 50%. Operating costs remained stable overall, with crew costs, repairs, stores and administrative expenses presenting marginal decrease, perhaps aided by the strong dollar, which hedged the higher cost of lubricants and insurance. As a result, the net earnings of the Tankers’ sector improved considerably compared to 2018.

• The Dry Bulk sector revenues, on the other hand, have decreased across all vessel types. Handys have been the most adversely affected presenting a decrease in revenue of approximately 12%, while the Capes were the best performing category with a decrease of only 4%. Operating costs followed the same pattern with Tankers remaining rather unchanged overall compared to 2018 which, combined with the falling charter rates, resulted in decreased net earnings ranging between 25% in the Handy and 10% in the Capesize category.

• Drydocking and Special Survey costs increased in both sectors as have the average number of days in drydock/special survey, perhaps reflecting the increased costs of installing Ballast Water Treatment Systems and Scrubbers during 2019.

“Although the above is an accurate description of the results, I must stress that every vessel type has its own unique characteristics and one should use the statistical tools offered by the Index to get a better understanding of how costs have behaved and why they have done so” warns Mr. Costas Constantinou, Global Maritime Leader at Moore Global Network and the person responsible for MMI. “MMI is a free, easy to use online platform and I encourage people to register and use its functionality to get answers customised to their specific needs.”

Constantinou continued: “As this is the second year of the MMI we can now start analysing costs over time enabling us to examine more correlations, which will help us better understand how costs behave. We plan to publish more studies similar to the “Cost by Fleet Size”, released a couple of months ago.”

For more information, the Moore Maritime Index 2020 brochure is available here.

To access the Moore Maritime Index database, please visit moore-index.com.