I promised to start from scratch so here goes. Initially, I thought this was pretty clear - there are 3 main parties involved in the commercial chain. The ship owner, ship broker and ship charterer.
Ship owner: Owns the ship/vessel and exploits it for commercial gain. The seller.
Ship broker: Intermediary between ship owners and ship charterers.
Ship charterer: Party that requires the ship/vessel for use, such as to transport its cargo. The buyer.
Turns out, there's more than that, which wasn't obvious initially.
Ship brokers and ship charterers could be pretty much the same thing. A ship charterer is 'usually' a party with cargo. However, a charterer could also be a party without cargo - the charterer may take a ship/vessel on charter from the ship owner, then re-lets the ship out to other charterers OR trades the ship to carry cargoes at a profit (in this way, the charterer becomes a broker as well). This is especially profitable in a market where freight/hire rates are rising.
Ship owners can be ship brokers as well - they need not be two separate entities.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship-owner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbroking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartering_(shipping)
http://virtualshipbroker.blogspot.sg/2009/04/shipbroker-trainee-positions.html?showComment=1251063894764#c9094740727411684509
Nice explanation. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeletevessel chartering