What minerals ship in bulk?
Minerals shipping is not one cargo. It is an umbrella over a family of mined and processed mineral commodities, each with its own cargo page: iron ore, bauxite, alumina, construction aggregates, salt and sulphur. Each has its own properties, vessel fit and trade lanes.
This page is the index to that family. A mineral cargo is a solid commodity dug or processed from the earth and carried loose in a bulk carrier’s holds under the International Maritime Solid Bulk Cargoes Code (the IMSBC Code). The single most important thing to understand about minerals as a shipping category is that the word covers cargoes that behave very differently in the hold. Iron ore is dense and high-volume. Bauxite can carry a liquefaction risk. Alumina is a fine, free-flowing powder. Salt and sulphur are corrosive. There is no single stowage factor, no single hazard profile, and no single vessel answer for “minerals” as a whole. That is why each mineral has a dedicated cargo page, and why this page links out to them rather than trying to describe them as one thing.
The mineral commodities Bulkargo charters, each with its own page, are set out below in two groups: the metallic ores and refined metal feeds, and the industrial and construction minerals.
Metallic ores and refined metal feeds
These are the minerals that feed the steel and aluminium industries. They are the highest-volume part of the mineral trade and the part that most shapes the dry bulk freight market.
- Iron ore. The largest dry bulk mineral by volume and the cargo that sets the Capesize market. Dense, low stowage factor, carried on the largest ore carriers from Australia and Brazil to Asian steel mills.
- Bauxite. The aluminium ore. A Group A cargo with a real liquefaction risk that must be managed against the transportable moisture limit, mined in West Africa, Australia and the Caribbean.
- Alumina. Aluminium oxide refined from bauxite. A fine, dusty, free-flowing powder that moves from refineries to smelters, with handling concerns that are the opposite of bauxite’s.
Scrap metal is a related metallic bulk cargo. It is not a mined mineral, so it sits outside this index, but it shares the geared-tonnage and hold-abrasion concerns of the ore trades. See the scrap metal page for that cargo, and the steel products page for finished steel, which is break-bulk rather than loose mineral bulk.
Industrial and construction minerals
These are the lower-profile minerals that move in large total volumes across shorter lanes. They are the workhorses of the geared Handysize and Supramax fleet.
- Aggregates. Sand, gravel and crushed stone for construction and land reclamation. High-density, short-sea cargoes that turn on loading and discharge speed more than on long-haul economics.
- Salt. Sodium chloride for the chlor-alkali industry, food processing and winter de-icing. Inert but corrosive to steel, demanding on hold cleanliness.
- Sulphur. A by-product of oil and gas processing that feeds fertilizer production. Corrosive through acid formation, with a dust-flammability concern in its crushed form.
Why minerals are an umbrella, not a single cargo
The reason this page is an index and not a specification is a point of definition. A cargo page documents a single commodity with one measurable property set: one stowage factor, one IMSBC group, one hazard profile. “Minerals” has none of those, because it spans many commodities at once. It is what the trade calls an umbrella term, a label for a category rather than a cargo.
That distinction matters commercially. A charterer never fixes “a minerals cargo”. They fix iron ore, or bauxite, or salt, and the fixture turns on the specific properties of that one commodity. The umbrella is useful for navigation and for understanding how the mineral trades relate to each other, but the operational detail always lives on the individual cargo page. The same logic separates minerals from the manufactured mineral products such as cement and clinker, which are processed goods rather than mined minerals and carry their own pages.
Matching the mineral to the vessel
Because the minerals differ so much, so does the tonnage that carries them. The vessel follows the cargo, not the label.
The highest-volume, longest-haul mineral, iron ore, defaults to the largest classes: Capesize and the very large ore carriers, because the freight saving per tonne over a smaller ship is decisive on a long voyage. Bauxite and alumina sit mostly on Panamax and Supramax tonnage. The industrial and construction minerals, salt, sulphur and aggregates, run heavily on geared Handysize and Supramax ships, because the lanes are shorter, the parcels smaller, and the receivers often lack shore cranage. For the full dimensional picture across the fleet, see the vessel size comparison, and for how parcel size flows into freight, the voyage charter page.
Scope and what this page does not cover
This page is a navigational index to the mineral cargoes Bulkargo charters, with a short orientation to how they differ and which vessels carry them. It is not itself a cargo specification: it does not carry stowage factors, IMSBC groups or trade-volume figures, because those belong to the individual commodity pages it links to. It also does not cover manufactured mineral products such as cement and clinker, finished steel, or non-mineral bulk cargoes such as grain and wood pellets. For any specific fixture, work from the relevant cargo page and the dry bulk shipping hub, then get a quote and a desk broker will scope the tonnage to your cargo.