Baltic Freight Index

The Baltic freight Index(BFI) was introduced in 1985 to provide the settlement for a view freight futures contract, BIFFEX. In the late 1990s the BFI was sub-divided into vessel-specific indices to allow better hedging strategies for the market and the changes in the original index can be listed as under

1998: The Baltic Exchange Dirty Tanker Index (BDTI) and Clean Tanker Index (BCTI) were introduced.

1999: The Baltic Cape Index (BCI) and the Baltic Panamax Index (BPI) because active.

2001: The Baltic Handy Index (BHI) which was introduced in November 1997, became the Baltic Handymax Index (BHMI) in 2001.

2006: The Baltic Supramax Index (BSI) superseded the BHMI as part of the general evolution of ship types.

2007: The Baltic Handy size Index was introduced to represent the smaller dry bulk vessels trading in the market.

2003: The Baltic Liquified Petroleum Gas Assessment (BLPG) was introduced.

2004: The Baltic Sale and Purchase Assessment (BSPA) and the Baltic Demolition Assessment (BDA) were introduced.

• The Baltic Exchange provides the settlement prices for all dry and the majority of wet FFAs and is responsible for collating the route and index figures.
• The Baltic also publishes the daily dry and wet forward curves received from the FFA brokers which are used by the clearers for margining purposes.