The fourth cargo · 18 bulk HS codes · UN Comtrade 2023

Vessel chartering

The cargo owners who book ships in and out of the Gulf. Measured in tonnes, because tonnes are what fill a vessel — and the biggest flow in the region turns out to be a one-day voyage between neighbours.

The client here is the charterer, not the shipowner

Everyone on this page is a cargo owner who books ships — the miller, the quarry, the refinery, the trading desk. — of chartering-grade cargo crosses GCC quays each year across — commodities.

And do not introduce yourself as another broker. Every company here already has them — Bahrain Steel uses BRS and Team Bulk; ARASCO has a COA with Bahri. The three openings that exist are spot overflow above the contract base load, the intra-Gulf short-sea leg the big brokers ignore, and port agency attached to the fixture, which is a much lower bar and earns the right to quote later.

The lanes, by tonnage

Biggest first. A flagged lane is an intra-Gulf voyage — the charterer sits within driving distance of the Dubai office, which a foreign broker cannot match.

#	From	To	Commodity	kt / yr	Value

What moves, both directions

GCC totals by commodity. Read the tonnage, not the dollars.

Commodity	Imported kt	Exported kt	Import value	Export value

The charterers

Tier A is a proven frequent charterer. A blank contact means it could not be proved — not that nobody looked.

Company	Country	Commodity	Vessel	Tier	Qualifying individual	Email	Phone

What this data is, and is not

No fixture-level data. Who fixed what, at what rate, last month sits in Clarksons SIN, the Baltic Exchange or Lloyd's List — all paid. "Proven frequent charterer" here rests on capacity, tender records and press, not on observed fixtures.
CFR versus FOB is unresolved, and it decides who the customer is. GFSA, Kuwait Flour Mills and Qatar Flour Mills tender largely on CFR — which means the winning trade house charters the ship, not the mill. One phone call settles it and it redirects the whole grain half of this list.
Missing tonnage is a filing gap, not an empty lane. Several reporters file value only; a zero kt against a large value means the weight was never filed. Sulphur is understated region-wide — Qatar alone exported 3.4 Mt in 2025 against the 31 kt in this table.
Named individuals are the weak layer — 6 of 42. Chartering managers are not published on corporate sites. A LinkedIn Sales Navigator seat is the single highest-value unlock against this list.
Oman gypsum is under-covered (~11 Mt/yr through Salalah across several miners not nameable from public sources), and Phoenix Global DMCC is dead — it collapsed in 2020 and any list still carrying it is stale.