Last week, a bulk carrier named Omega, which was transporting 50,000 mt of Russian slabs, was damaged and sunk off after a collision with another vessel, Mirabella, which was shipping Iranian pellets. The accident happened on January 23,15 km northeast of Jigu Reef, outside of the Yangtze Estuary.
The slabs aboard the ship were from Russian producer NLMK, as confirmed by a number of sources, even though lately sales of slabs to China by this producer have been rare, taking into account the unattractive price. The vessel left Tuapse port, which is used by NLMK, on November 10. “NLMK had been paid already. The customer will have to recover their losses through insurance. The cargo was insured,” one source said. The ship crew was saved, except the captain.
However, it is still unclear by the time of publication who the buyer of the cargo was. One of the large Chinese traders stated, “I didn’t hear that this allocation was booked to an end-user,” meaning that some Chinese trader will have to deal with the insurance issue.