The first futures contract based on a Baltic type 58kt Supramax priced from a basket of ten time charter routes has been traded with Baltic Exchange member SSY Futures Ltd acting as broker.

The trade was cleared via Nasdaq OMX and involved units of well-known FFA market participants Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.

The Baltic Exchange has been dual reporting the Supramax 58,000 since 31 July 2015 and ceased publishing the 52,000 dwt assessments on 3 April 2017. Click here to read more.

SSY’s veteran FFA broker and Supramax specialist Jeff Brown said: “We are delighted to have concluded this first transaction in the new Supramax contract and are grateful to Cargill and Louis Dreyfus for their support. It is important to the freight industry to keep our indices up to date and relevant to the underlying markets, the new contract achieves this extremely well. We are confident of further support from the market as this new contract finds traction.”

Forward Freight Agreements (FFAs) are used by freight market participants to mitigate shipping price risk. The Baltic Exchange is the world’s leading publisher of Freight Market Data, FFAs settle against their indices and are cleared by several of the world’s leading exchange groups, including SGX, LCH Clearnet and Nasdaq OMX.

Click here for daily supramax assessments by the Baltic Exchange.