Seanergy Maritime Holdings chief executive Stamatis Tsantanis said he will be happy if Vale meets this year’s minimum iron-ore projection as global coal trade is expected to stay strong. The Brazilian iron ore giant’s production volume fell 6% for this year’s first quarter to 63.9 MMT, putting the miner under the gun to meet full-year guidance of 320 to 335 MMT. But Tsantanis expects Vale’s ore volumes, which heavy rains in the Gervais region set back so far this year, to rise for the rest of 2022 and boost spot rates for capesize bulkers.

“The worst-case scenario is pretty much what we have been experiencing so far,” Tsantanis told analysts on Tuesday during the company’s first-quarter earnings call. “I am confident that they will be meeting their lowest part of the range they have given as a guidance, so I’m optimistic that the volumes will catch up pretty much in the market on a daily basis.” He said he is confident that Vale will beat this “worst-case scenario” that has helped keep year-to-date average capesize spot rates at $17,000 to $18,000 per day.

“Whether that upside for the remaining of the year is going to be $50,000 or $60,000 per day — or it’s going to be $30,000 or even $25,000 — we’re very happy with all these scenarios,” he said. “We are way above break even and we are way profitable in any case.”

Seanergy on Tuesday reported $7.7m in adjusted earnings for the first three months of the year as it posted its largest profit for quarter of any year in its history. The company believes the Russia-Ukraine war will further boost spot rates by boosting tonne-mile demand for coal as Europe bans Russian coal and Russia exports the commodity to China and other countries. “Europe is importing 50 MMT of coal from Russia and now this has started to be diverted from much longer distances,” he said.

The European Union plans to implement the ban in August.

“We are not seeing the full effect of that yet because of a lot of inventories here and there in Europe, but not so much in India and in other places where they’re dangerously low,” he said. “But we expect that to accumulate and pick up in the next few months, so we expect coal, as we are turning to the second half of the year in order to procure for the winter of 2022 to 2023, to pick up a lot.”