Supramax’s coal premium looks better on paper than at anchor
Supramax and Ultramax tonnage moving Indonesian coal to west and east coast India, and on to China, is earning close to double what Kamsarmax does on comparable coal legs this week. Advanced Shipping & Trading's Week 43 report (23.10.2026) puts Supramax at USD 27,000/day on the Indonesia to west coast India run, USD 33,000/day to east coast India, and USD 19,500/day to Japan, against USD 18,875/day for Kamsarmax on the South China-Japan-India coal circuit. Star Asia Shipbroking's own Week 43 numbers tell a similar story: Panamax on an Indonesian round voyage sits at USD 19,850/day, well below the USD 21,325/day Supramax is pulling on Pacific-India runs.
On the surface that reads as a clean case for owners to push smaller tonnage into the Indonesian coal trade. Our own AIS data complicates that. Taboneo, the main loading anchorage for Kalimantan coal and the port most of this Supramax/Ultramax tonnage actually queues at, showed a median wait in October of around 244 hours, roughly ten days, against about 86 hours for Panamax and Kamsarmax tonnage waiting at the same class of anchorage. The sample is thin, ten vessels, so treat it as a signal rather than a hard number. But a ten day queue eats into the daily rate advantage fast, and it is not showing up in the broker numbers above because those are quoted hire rates, not realized earnings after waiting time.
Balikpapan and Samarinda, the other two Kalimantan anchorages in our dataset, show nothing like that congestion (Panamax/Kamsarmax median under 7 hours, Handysize under 10). So the bottleneck looks specific to Taboneo rather than Kalimantan coal loading in general.
There is a second layer worth flagging. The Baltic Panamax Index has fallen for five straight sessions, from 2,247 on 20.10 to 2,021 on 27.10. That slide is more likely tied to softer steel-linked Panamax cargo and a fuller supply of ships than to weak coal demand. Breakwave Advisors' October note backs that read: India and China's coal import appetite looks firm this month, even though Indonesia's full-year coal export volumes are still running about 9.5 percent below last year, with shipments to India down 17 percent and to China down nearly 14 percent. October's strength looks more like a short-term pickup than a reversal of that yearly decline.
Put together, the headline day rate is only half the picture in this trade. Anyone sizing tonnage for Indonesian coal needs to price the queue at Taboneo alongside the rate, not just compare one against the other.