Panama Canal Authority to Cut Daily Transits as El Niño Drought Bites
21 August 2026 From 3 September, the Panama Canal Authority will reduce daily vessel transits from 36 to 34, falling further to 32 from 15 September, as a severe El Niño-driven drought depletes the freshwater lakes that feed the canal’s locks. The move reverses a period of relative ease earlier this year and lands at a moment when traffic through the waterway has already been elevated, boosted by US Gulf energy exports rerouted through the canal following disruption to the Strait of Hormuz. The numbers underline why this matters well beyond Panama. The canal carries around five per cent of global maritime trade and some 40 per cent of US container traffic, with no viable substitute on the US East Coast to Asia corridor, only a costly detour of roughly 8,000 nautical miles around Cape Horn. Vessel operators are already paying a premium to avoid delay: one auction slot changed hands for close to 4 million US dollars in early August, a figure surpassed days later by a 4.6 million dollar bid. For trading and logistics businesses, this is now a familiar pattern rather than an isolated shock. The 2023 to 2024 drought cut canal traffic by roughly a third and rippled through global supply chains for months. This second major restriction inside three years suggests freshwater scarcity, not lock capacity, has become the canal’s binding constraint, a structural risk rather than a seasonal one. At Gapuma, where our business depends on the reliable movement of commodities and speciality chemicals across borders, developments like this reinforce the value of diversified sourcing, flexible logistics planning and close attention to the routes our supply chains depend upon.
EU Gas Storage Passes 60%: A Thinner Cushion Heading Into Winter
Gapuma Market Commentary 18 August 2026 European gas storage has crossed the 60% threshold, but the milestone tells only part of the story. According to the latest figures from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), reported by Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, EU stocks stood at 60.8% full as of 15 August, having passed 60% two days earlier. On a percentage basis, that is the lowest reading for this point in the calendar than in any of the previous five years – a gap that matters more to the winter outlook than the headline number itself. A market not pricing storage risk The shortfall reflects a combination of tighter supply and weak commercial incentive. Since the start of the year, the EU has brought in roughly 63.6 million tonnes of LNG (some 87.7 billion cubic metres of gas), around 4.1% below the same period in 2025, as the market continues to absorb the loss of Qatari export volumes and the broader disruption the war in the Middle East has caused to global gas flows. Compounding this, the Dutch TTF forward curve has remained persistently backwardated. Platts assessed the month-ahead TTF benchmark at €60.68/MWh on 14 August, a premium of €1.65/MWh over the Winter 2026 contract. In practical terms, this removes much of the financial reward that would normally encourage market participants to buy gas cheaply in summer and hold it for winter, leaving injections to run below their usual seasonal pace. Brussels eases the target, but scepticism persists Early in the Iran conflict, the European Commission encouraged member states to lower their national storage targets from 90% to 80%, using flexibilities within the EU’s gas storage regulation to soften the risk of price spikes tied to aggressive late-season buying. Even this reduced goal is now being questioned. Axpo’s head of energy market analysis and meteorology, Andy Sommer, said this month that reaching “well above 70% by November” would likely prove difficult on current trends. S&P Global Commodity Insights’ own CERA analysts, meanwhile, project European storage reaching around 75% full by the end of October – comfortably below the original 90% target, though still within reach of the relaxed one. Germany: the pivotal laggard Germany warrants particular attention as the final weeks of the injection season approach. As the EU’s largest single storage market, with capacity for around 246.5 TWh (roughly 23.3 billion cubic metres, some 22% of total EU storage), its fill rate continues to trail the wider bloc, sitting just below 50%. Berlin’s energy ministry has reiterated that it regards stocking as a task for market players rather than government, resisting pressure for direct intervention. There are, however, early signs of improved commercial appetite: storage operator SEFE fully allocated the 5 TWh of capacity offered at its Rehden facility in a recent auction, a marked change from previous rounds where volumes went unsold, aided by a new options-based product that defers most fees until capacity is actually used. Outlook None of this points, on present evidence, to a supply emergency. Europe’s LNG import and transmission infrastructure remains structurally sound, and the remaining weeks of the injection season could still narrow the gap to the relaxed target, particularly if commercial incentives to store improve. Equally, the current trajectory leaves a materially thinner buffer than markets have grown used to in recent winters, and the consequences of a cold snap, a further Middle East-related supply shock, or a slower-than-expected Qatari LNG return would fall on a system with less spare capacity to absorb them. For buyers and traders exposed to European gas and downstream chemicals pricing, the sensible course is to treat the current trajectory as a planning input rather than a settled outcome, and to build resilience into contracting and hedging strategies well ahead of the November deadline, rather than waiting to see how the season closes. Gapuma’s energy markets team will continue to monitor the injection season as it develops.
The Ice Silk Road: Welcome News, Not a Silver Bullet
17 August 2026 For commodities traders like Gapuma Group, the past few years have taught a hard lesson: it is rarely the price of the raw material itself that wrecks a budget – it is the cost and unpredictability of getting it there. Freight rates that double overnight, chokepoints that close without warning, and transit times that stretch from weeks into months have done more damage to procurement planning than any single commodity cycle. Instability in shipping, far more than instability in the commodities themselves, has been the real obstacle to budgeting with any confidence. That is why the launch of Sea Legend’s “Ice Silk Road” deserves attention. The Chinese shipping line has begun the first regular weekly container service between Ningbo and Felixstowe via Russia’s Northern Sea Route, cutting a journey that normally takes 32 to 40 days via Suez down to roughly 20. For a sector accustomed to routes hostage to the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a viable northern alternative is not a small thing. Let us be clear: this is not a silver bullet. The route runs for a matter of weeks each year, from mid-August to early October, when Arctic waters are navigable enough for ice-class vessels and Russian icebreaker escort. It depends on infrastructure and permits controlled by Rosatom, introducing a fresh layer of geopolitical exposure alongside the very chokepoints it helps traders sidestep. Volumes remain a fraction of what moves through Suez, and reliability at scale is still unproven. But logistics stability is rarely built on a single solution – it is built on options. Every additional route, however seasonal or constrained, adds resilience to a supply chain that has spent years absorbing shocks it could not plan for. If the Ice Silk Road matures into a dependable summer corridor, it becomes one more tool for traders like Gapuma to manage cost and timing risk, alongside rail links, established sea lanes and diversified sourcing. Cautious optimism, then, rather than celebration. Watch this space.
Has Oil Stopped Reacting to Politics – and Started Steering It?
4 August 2026 Brent and WTI rebounded on Tuesday, clawing back part of Monday’s sharp sell-off, with Brent trading back above $84 a barrel. Traders were left questioning whether the market had priced in a diplomatic breakthrough that, according to Tehran, does not exist. It is the latest lurch in a pattern that has defined the Strait of Hormuz crisis for months: political announcements moving crude by five, six, even seven per cent in a single session, only to reverse within a day. Monday’s decline followed President Trump’s claim that talks with Iran would resume. It unwound within twenty-four hours once Iran’s foreign ministry denied any such negotiations were under way, and a vessel was struck near Hormuz for good measure. The rhythm is now familiar enough that analysts increasingly suspect political messaging is being timed to the market itself, rather than the market simply reacting to political fact. As Kyle Rodda, senior market analyst at capital.com, put it: “Fridays are for fighting but Mondays are for the markets in Trump’s world.” It is a wry line, but it captures something real – the choreography of threat and climbdown looks increasingly calibrated to price, not the reverse. Tehran itself has accused Washington of using announcements to move financial markets rather than negotiate in good faith. Whatever the accusation’s merit, it reinforces the sense that political rhetoric is now tracking the oil price rather than setting it. Layer in OPEC+’s steady supply increases and forecasts from Goldman Sachs and Kotak Securities pointing to a cooling market into 2027, and a fragile picture emerges: crude’s fundamentals argue for lower prices, while its politics argue for volatility. For traders, distributors and buyers across the commodities and chemicals supply chain, the lesson is discipline. Headlines can move price faster than verified cargo data ever will, and a rally built on a denied negotiation is not a rally built to last. At Gapuma, we watch the shipping lanes and the barrels – not just the briefings.
From Dialogue to Delivery: Gapuma Applauds ASIS 2026’s Drive for Local Content across Africa
28 July 2026 The fifth edition of the Africa Social Impact Summit (ASIS 2026) has once again shown what is possible when purpose meets partnership. Co-convened by Sterling One Foundation, the United Nations in Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, and the Lagos State Government, the summit brought together over 2,000 leaders, investors, policymakers and changemakers in Lagos under the theme “Financing for Development: Building Resilience and Transforming Emerging Economies.” At Gapuma Group, we welcome ASIS 2026’s renewed commitments from partners including UNFPA, Seplat Energy, IHS Towers and The Coca-Cola Company, and the summit’s clear message that Africa’s development will be built through collaboration and local ownership, not isolated effort. It is a message that sits close to home. Through GLB, our Nigerian business, and across our chemicals and commodities operations and distribution networks in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, Gapuma has long championed local content as the foundation of sustainable growth. For us, that means local teams, local partnerships and local capacity built to last, whether we are supplying industry in Lagos or building presence elsewhere on the continent. ASIS 2026’s shift from dialogue to delivery reflects exactly the approach we take to our own markets: real investment, real presence and real accountability to the communities in which we operate. Africa’s growth will not be financed from the outside looking in. It will be built by businesses and institutions rooted in the continent, working together towards common goals. We congratulate Sterling One Foundation, the United Nations in Nigeria and all this year’s co-convenors and partners on a summit that has once again turned ambition into action. Gapuma remains committed to playing its part, one market, one partnership and one community at a time.
Mining the Sea: America’s Answer to China’s Critical Minerals Grip
21 July 2o26 China’s grip on the world’s critical minerals has long been a source of quiet unease in Washington. Beijing refines roughly 85 to 95 per cent of the world’s rare earths and dominates cobalt, nickel and lithium processing besides, leaving the United States dangerously exposed should the tap ever be tightened. Now a team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) believes the answer may be sitting, quite literally, on America’s doorstep. Their newly developed co-flow reactor draws high-purity magnesium hydroxide straight from seawater, cycling it alongside sodium hydroxide until the mineral precipitates out where the two liquids meet. The method strips out several of the stages older techniques required, and the team has already filed a patent. “Just 0.1 percent of seawater contains enough critical minerals like magnesium and lithium, if we can fully extract them, to meet humanity’s needs for the next 50,000 years or more,” says Jessica Cross, a chemical oceanographer at PNNL. The scaling potential is what makes this genuinely interesting. Paired with an existing facility such as the Carlsbad desalination plant in California, PNNL’s own analysis suggests the reactor could yield some 1.16 million pounds of magnesium hydroxide a day – more than triple US domestic demand from a single site. Nickel extraction, researchers say, may follow. It is not a new idea: America mined magnesium from the sea for fifty years before imports took over in the 1990s. What has changed is the chemistry, and the urgency. Independent reporting on the project notes that PNNL scientists increasingly view the oceans as one of the largest untapped reserves of the lithium, manganese, cobalt and rare earth elements that clean energy and electronics manufacturing depend upon. None of this displaces China’s refining dominance overnight. But it points to a slower, steadier shift: away from a single-source supply chain and towards one where the sea itself becomes a domestic mine. For an economy that still imports the bulk of its magnesium hydroxide, that is not a small thing.
Trade, Regulation and the Value of Agility
14 July 2026 Two headlines this week tell an interesting story about two very different approaches to doing business in Europe. On one hand, the European Commission has conditionally approved the Baker Hughes-Chart Industries merger, subject to a series of remedies following a detailed competition review. That is the EU’s institutional model at work, comprehensive, rules-based and regulatory. On the other, the UK has concluded a new trade agreement with Switzerland. It is another reminder that, post-Brexit, Britain is able to pursue its own commercial relationships and trade priorities. For those of us involved in international commodities and supply chains, the contrast is noteworthy. Commodity markets thrive on certainty, speed and the ability to respond quickly to changing market conditions. Traders need governments that facilitate commerce, open markets and remove unnecessary friction. While robust competition rules have an important role to play, there is also a strong case for agile trade policy that enables businesses to seize opportunities as they arise. Switzerland has long demonstrated how a relatively small nation can punch well above its weight by championing free trade, commercial pragmatism and international connectivity. The UK’s growing engagement with Switzerland suggests an ambition to embrace more of that outward-looking mindset. From the perspective of businesses operating across global commodity markets, this is an encouraging direction of travel. Success increasingly belongs to economies that can move quickly, build trusted partnerships and provide the confidence businesses need to invest, trade and grow. At Gapuma Group, we welcome policies that strengthen international trade, reduce barriers and create an environment in which businesses can compete, innovate and deliver value across global supply chains.
The Barrel: The last place the story shows up
9 July 2026 When the US–Iran ceasefire collapsed in the Strait of Hormuz this week, the headlines went straight to price. Brent ticked up, then wobbled either way, and most commentary moved on. But for the companies that actually move oil, gas and chemicals through that water, the price is not the problem. The problem is everything sitting underneath it. Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG. That makes route reliability a commercial contract in its own right, and it is precisely the thing a trader cannot hedge. You can hedge crude. You cannot hedge a captain who refuses to enter a severe-risk zone, an insurer who rewrites a war-risk exclusion overnight, or a payment rail that quietly narrows while your cargo is still mid-voyage. That last point is the one keeping people up. A US general licence opened a legal corridor for Iranian oil on 21 June. Within roughly a fortnight it was revoked and replaced with a wind-down order. Legal permission, it turns out, is not the same as bankable confidence, and each transaction now carries a lifecycle risk that is far harder to price than the commodity itself. This is why so many commodities businesses are in a genuine tailspin right now. The instinct is to watch the screen. But the screen is a lagging indicator. A vessel that turns back, an insurer that hesitates, a bank that declines a settlement, none of it registers immediately as a shortage. It registers as friction. Friction compounds quietly, and by the time it reaches the price, the decision you needed to make was already late. The firms that come through this well will not be the ones with the best price call. They will be the ones who treated the route, the licence and the counterparty as three separate clocks, and started tracking all three before the market did. Strategy in this environment is not prediction. It is knowing which questions to ask, and asking them early. Gapuma Group | Trading commodities and speciality chemicals across international markets, with a clear read on the ground beneath the price.
Coatings For Africa 2026: Gapuma Returns to Johannesburg
24 June 2026 The doors are open. Coatings For Africa 2026 begins today at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, and Gapuma Group is here, on the floor, exhibiting for a second time at Southern Africa’s largest gathering of the coatings industry. Held in association with the South African Paint Manufacturing Association (SAPMA), the event runs from today, 24 June, through to 26 June, bringing together more than 150 exhibiting brands from over 15 countries. For three days it becomes the place where the industry does business: manufacturers, raw material suppliers, distributors, buyers and technical specialists such as chemists and formulators, all under one roof, meeting face to face. We are here in force. Our delegation is led by Group Managing Director Jack Bardakjian and Operations Director Stephen Harris, alongside our full South Africa team, including Gary Hayes and Dave Steward. Their presence reflects the importance we place on this market and on the relationships that underpin our work across the region. The timing could not be sharper. Southern Africa’s paint and coatings market, valued at around USD 770 million, is forecast to grow steadily through 2031, driven by construction activity, infrastructure investment and rising demand for more sustainable coating technologies. Running alongside the exhibition, ChemTalks opens today too, with a focused programme spanning regulation, formulation and the latest technical innovation. For everyone working within coatings, this is the moment to gather insight, exchange ideas with industry leaders, explore new opportunities and forge stronger relationships across the region. We are on the floor now. If you are here in Johannesburg, come and find us.
Gapuma at Chevron Oronite’s 2026 Distributors Seminar
Among the few: Gapuma at Chevron Oronite’s 2026 Distributors Seminar 18 June 2026 GLB Chemical Services Limited, Gapuma Group’s Nigerian subsidiary, was represented at the 2026 Sales Representatives and Distributors Seminar at Chevron Oronite in Paris earlier this month. Prakash Ramchandani, Managing Director of GLB, and Thompson Longe attended on Gapuma’s behalf. The seminar brought together Chevron Oronite’s distribution network for three days of technical exchange and strategic dialogue. For GLB, appointed Chevron Oronite’s authorised distributor in Nigeria in 2020, these gatherings remain central to a partnership now in its sixth year, one strengthened further in 2025 with Gapuma’s selection as Chevron’s Group II base oils distributor in the Nigerian market. The programme also included a visit to Chevron Oronite’s plant at Le Havre, where a newly constructed, fully automated warehouse has been brought into operation. The facility holds up to 8,200 pallets, a clear signal of the scale and sophistication underpinning Oronite’s European supply chain. Our thanks to the Chevron Oronite team in Paris and Le Havre, among them Eric De Goustine and Daren Barnes, for their hospitality and for another valuable opportunity to deepen a relationship built on technical excellence and shared commitment to the Nigerian market.
Biofuels: Where Policy Writes the Market
5 June 2026 A report by Transport & Environment (T&E), the Brussels-based clean transport campaign group, featured this week in Le Monde, projects that global biofuel demand could rise by 30% in 2026 and as much as 70% by 2030, well above earlier forecasts of 40%. The drivers are familiar to anyone watching energy markets closely. Amid instability in the Middle East and rising fossil fuel prices, countries with strong agricultural sectors are lifting their blending mandates. Indonesia is raising the palm oil content of its biodiesel to 50% from July; India, Malaysia, Brazil and the United States have all revised their targets upward. It is a moment that rewards a steady hand and genuine market literacy. As Gapuma’s own biofuels trader Charles Percheron told Le Monde: “It’s a market that wouldn’t exist without political will. Regulations can stimulate demand, but they can also curb it.” This is a market built on political will, then, where regulation can accelerate demand just as readily as it can restrain it. Reading those signals – anticipating where mandates move next, and pricing the second-generation feedstocks that may follow – is precisely the kind of judgement that defines good trading. That a national newspaper of record turned to Gapuma for that read says something about where the firm now sits in the conversation. We’re proud to see our people’s instinct and expertise recognised on the international stage. Read the full piece (In French) here: https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2026/06/04/la-ruee-vers-les-agrocarburants-un-risque-pour-la-securite-alimentaire-mondiale_6696904_3234.html
Gapuma Switzerland: At the Heart of European Biofuels
26 May 2026 Rafael Fraletti, Charles Percheron and Fabrice Brunet – Managing Director, Switzerland – recently attended the 10th European Biofuels Conference – organised by Dropet, a division of Marex – held at the Pestana Cidadela Cascais in Portugal. Now in its tenth year, the conference has established itself as a landmark gathering for buyers, sellers and companies active in the European biofuels markets. The three-day programme combined substantive keynote sessions with extensive networking. Argus Media’s Giulia Squadrin and Joshua Thomas Michalowski opened proceedings with an overview of European biofuels market trends, pricing and outlook, while Andreas Bodenmueller of Verbio examined the implications of RED III through the lens of the German experience. Beyond the formal sessions, the format allowed for the kind of frank, informal dialogue that rarely happens in a purely transactional setting – something Gapuma Group values highly as we continue to build our presence in this space. For us, conferences such as this one are not simply networking events. They are an essential part of understanding where markets are heading, and of positioning ourselves to serve our clients well. We look forward to the conversations already in progress as a result.