Week 11, 2018 (Mar.12-Mar.16), the International Grain Future Freight (IGF) reported the Panamax forward freight rate of U.S. Gulf-Tianjin route (soybean) from Jun. to Jul. in 2018, and the trend is shown in the chart below.

Although the speed of soybean reaping in Brazil was slower than that in the past years, luckily, some reaping work in the northern and western of soybean production areas has drawn to a close. To contrast, the soybean production in Argentina suffered marvelous decline due to its continuous drought, which might have led to lower soybean production many times during the whole year.

In terms of the shipping market, the future freight rate continued going up. In details, it rose $0.12/ton on Mar.12 (Mon.) and then remained the same from Mar.13 (Tues.) to Mar.16 (Fri.), finally being closed at $34.75/ton, increasing 0.36% compared with that on Mar.09 (the last release day of Week 10).