Jul 2026 sailings
168
All-time monthly record
Ledger of 10,458 nickel-ore voyages, 7,382 of them loading in the Philippines, running from June 2017 to 2 August 2026. Monthly counts are measured on a port-activity basis; the series is calibrated so July 2026 reads the verified 168.
July 2026 is the highest single month in the nine-year ledger. It clears the previous best, August 2024, by 11 sailings, and it clears the previous July record — 117 in July 2021 — by 44%. July is normally a shoulder month, not a peak: the record was set out of season.
| Rank / month | Sailings | Tracked parcels | Tracked Mt |
|---|
Three of the top five months are 2026, and the top three are consecutive — May, June, July. Every entry falls between May and September, the pre-monsoon window, so seasonality is real but it is not what changed; what changed is the height of the seasonal peak.
The tonnage column matters as much as the count. July moved 6.29 Mt across 125 AIS-confirmed bulk parcels, an average of 50.3 kt. Against 168 total sailings that leaves roughly 43 liftings that were not conventional bulk carriers — small parcels and short-haul barges. Average parcel size has fallen from 53 kt in 2024 to 50 kt now. The marginal sailing in this market is getting smaller, and the next section shows where it is going.
Philippine cargoes discharging in Indonesia over January–July: 6 in 2023, 70 in 2024, 92 in 2025, 151 in 2026. A further 45 July voyages are still at sea with no confirmed discharge port, so the 2026 figure will be revised up.
China, meanwhile, has not moved. Confirmed China-bound voyages for January–July were 438 in 2024, 408 in 2025 and 411 in 2026. So the premise that Chinese and Indonesian demand surged together does not hold in the ledger: China is the base load, Indonesia is the entire increment. If you are pricing this rally, price it off Indonesian smelter feed, not off Chinese NPI restocking.
Discharge is highly concentrated. Of 475 Indonesia-bound voyages on record, 307 discharged at Weda Bay — 65%. Bahodopi took 70, Kolonodale 41, Kendari 40. Philippine export elasticity is now tied to the RKAB quota and ramp schedule of essentially one node.
Surigao remains the spine at 259 voyages in 2026, but Homonhon has climbed to 155, with Zambales at 69 and Palawan at 62. The port to watch is Zamboanga: 6 voyages in 2025, 40 in 2026. It is the closest Philippine load point to Indonesia, and its monthly cadence is the cleanest leading indicator of whether Indonesian buying persists.
Indonesia-bound cargoes originate at Surigao (242), Dinagat Island (88), Zambales (46), Zamboanga (25) and Palawan (21). The short Mindanao–Halmahera leg is opening up, but northern Zambales is also shipping south — meaning Indonesian bids are strong enough to absorb the longer freight.
The Chinese side is dispersed by contrast: Yangjiang 322, Ningde 302, Lianyungang 264, Lanshan 230. One concentrated buyer, one fragmented buyer.
The four headline charts describe the record. These six describe the pressure points around it — the ports whose cadence tells you whether Indonesia keeps buying, the concentration point whose quota reshuffles the entire flow, and the seasonal ceiling the platform is now bumping against.
Zamboanga sits 350 nm from Halmahera — the shortest laterite lane in the corridor. In 2025 it recorded 6 outbound voyages; in Jan–Jul 2026 it has already recorded 40. That is a step-change, not a drift.
Watch the trailing 3-month average, not the monthly print. If the trailing line breaks below 4 sailings/month, Indonesian appetite is thinning. If it holds above 6, the corridor is structurally re-routed.
Average AIS-confirmed parcel size has fallen from 53.0 kt in 2024 to 50.3 kt in Jul 2026. The trend is not linear — it is a stair-step. Each additional short-haul Indonesian lane pulls the average down; each Chinese Handymax lifts it.
The marginal sailing this year is coming from smaller, faster tramps working the Mindanao–Halmahera leg. A rising sailing count with a shrinking average parcel is a signal about lane type, not tonnage.
Of every 100 Philippine cargoes that discharge in Indonesia, 65 go to Weda Bay, 15 to Bahodopi, 9 to Kolonodale, 8 to Kendari, and 3 to everything else combined. That is not diversification — it is single-node dependency.
In February 2026 Jakarta cut Weda Bay's 2026 quota to 12 Mt from 42 Mt, a 71% reduction. The mine's own feedstock is being throttled at exactly the moment its imported feed is at record. The two curves — RKAB and Philippine loadings — are pointing in opposite directions.
The load-port league table is more uneven than the headline suggests. Surigao and Homonhon together take 65% of 2026 loadings. Zambales and Palawan are the next tier at 8–9% each. The remainder — Zamboanga, Tubay, Dinagat, Tawi Tawi, Davao — are the flex layer.
Stress-test the downside on Surigao first; stress-test the upside on Zamboanga. Everything else is noise around those two.
Jan–Jul cumulative voyages ran between 482 and 668 for six years (2019–2025). In 2026 the same window prints 777 — a 16.3% jump over the prior high. The platform has re-based, not just the peak.
Because the increment is entirely Indonesian and Indonesia's own quota is falling, the 777 is a demand signal from a specific customer, not from the market as a whole. Read it that way when pricing forward tonnage.
The nine-year seasonal envelope (grey band = min-max, dark line = median) shows the pre-monsoon peak window is May–September, with a typical maximum around 150 sailings. 2026 has broken through the top of the historical range in every month since April.
Historically, the ceiling was a physical one — bulker availability, monsoon onset, port congestion. This year it is a demand ceiling that has moved, not a supply ceiling that has broken. The next stress point is October, when seasonal exit typically pulls the curve back to 60–100.
One. The record is structural, not seasonal. Pre-monsoon loading always lifts May–September, and that is already in the price. The signal is that the rolling twelve-month total and the Jan–Jul cumulative are both at records — the whole platform has moved up, not just the peak month.
Two. Single-buyer dependency. Indonesia supplied all of the growth while China stayed flat at roughly 410 voyages per Jan–Jul period. Any adjustment to Weda Bay's quota or ramp removes the only source of incremental demand, and Chinese buying has shown no capacity to absorb it.
Three. Two concentration points to stress-test. Weda Bay takes 65% of the Indonesia flow and Surigao originates 41% of Philippine exports. Model the downside on those two nodes first, and track Zamboanga monthly as the early-warning line.
Two international-media clips that frame the same story from the demand side — the RKAB cut at Weda Bay and the flow of Philippine ore into Indonesian smelters.