Today Caribbean, tomorrow the North Sea
Charter assignment of the tankers

One thing that stands out when you take a look at the route map for the HLL vessels is that no fixed routes have been marked for the shipping company’s newly acquired tankers.”The vessels are not operated in scheduled service, but in tramp shipping worldwide” – is the explanation for this since the chartering of tankers is handled somewhat differently from container ships. This is related to the market conditions.

Tanker charterers include the large oil corporations as well as so-called traders and operators who place orders for small and large tankers for varying periods of time. They themselves all have control (in some cases also ownership) of vessels of all size classes and supplement their additional tonnage needs mainly through voyage charters or predominantly shorter time charter periods. In contrast to container ships, the crude oil and products tankers are usually employed within the framework of voyage charters. This means the shipping company charters its entire ship or part of it for maritime transport of a cargo for a certain voyage from or to the port of discharge.

The spot market and thus the voyage charter dominate in the oil business. Many are familiar with the term spot market as an international oil market with Rotterdam and London as the focal points as well as regional oil exchanges in Singapore, the Persian Gulf and New York. They serve short-term and long-term trade with mineral oil products or crude oil. Spot market in shipping means that a vessel can take part in the market in the short term and accept a new assignment wherever it happens to be available. Many charterers tend to employ ships for a relatively short period of time, on a so-called spot basis. Others, by contrast, charter vessels for several years. Then there are also the lighterage or shuttle jobs that only last a few days.

Hello Taxi!

The products and chemical tankers of the HLL shipping company operate on all of the seven seas because there is always cargo somewhere that comparable to a taxi the vessel is called for a certain trip. In contrast to crude oil, which is transported from the source to the refinery in large tankers in most cases, products trade takes place in a far more flexible fashion. For the vessels of the HLL shipping company this means that they operate in typical areas such as northern Europe, the Caribbean and the China and Singapore range Taking into account the ice class, the new tankers of the HLL shipping company can be employed worldwide. They are also flexible to carry chemical and products. The type of employment is therefore just as diverse.

Hurry, hurry!

A chartering department in the tanker shipping market has to keep its ear to the market even more intensively than in the container shipping market since spot voyages are concluded at short notice. This means: reacting faster, negotiating conditions for the charter more rapidly, circulating the specifications of the ship as well as position and availability as early as possible. Compared to the time charter customary in container business, employment of a tanker of the same size as the HLL vessels is usually over after only a few days. While a container ship is chartered once or twice a year at the very most, it is quite possible for a tanker to be chartered up to 70 times
a year because of the short voyages.