Capesize Bulk Carrier
The largest conventional dry bulk class, too big for the Panama and Suez locks by tradition, carrying iron ore and coal on long-haul routes.
A Capesize is the largest conventional class of dry bulk carrier, named for the tradition that a ship of that size sailed around the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn rather than transiting the canals. The class is defined commercially rather than by any instrument, and the trades that support it are long-haul iron ore and coal, where the cost advantage of a large parcel outweighs the small number of terminals that can receive one.
Size is what shapes the economics. A Capesize can only load and discharge at deepwater terminals with the draught and the shore equipment to handle her, so the class trades a narrow set of routes and its earnings are more volatile than those of the smaller geared classes that can call almost anywhere.
The full article will cover the size band and its relationship to the wider bulk carrier size classes , the Newcastlemax and Valemax variants and the port constraints that produced them, the principal ore and coal routes, hold and hatch arrangement, the earnings benchmark published as the Baltic Capesize Index , and the light displacement tonnage band that sets demolition proceeds under ship finance and asset valuation .