The Atlantic Turn: Africa’s New Trade Corridors
The Port of Lobito, Angola – the Atlantic terminus of a 1,300 km rail corridor from the Copperbelt By: Shahab Mossavat 2 October 2026 For decades, the copper of Central Africa has gone to sea the long way round. Mined in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo and in northern Zambia, it has travelled by lorry east to Dar es Salaam or south to Durban, across several borders and over journeys of around a month. The Atlantic was, to all practical purposes, out of reach. That is no longer so. The Lobito Corridor – some 1,300 km of railway from the Copperbelt to the Angolan port of Lobito, along the line of the old Benguela railway – is carrying freight again. The first trial consignment of Congolese copper concentrate reached the coast in eight days. Operated under concession by a consortium of Trafigura, Mota-Engil and Vecturis, and backed by the European Union and the United States, it is among the most closely watched infrastructure projects on the continent. More than a mineral line It would be easy to read this as a mining story. The more interesting question is what travels the other way. A railway that takes copper out can bring goods in: fertilisers, industrial chemicals, coatings raw materials, water treatment polymers and grain. These are the inputs on which farms and factories depend, and they can now reach inland markets faster and at a lower landed cost. Predictability matters as much as speed. A manufacturer who can rely on a delivery date holds less stock, ties up less capital and can plan production with confidence. That is how a mineral route becomes an economy. The governments concerned are insistent on the point. As Prime Minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka of the Democratic Republic of Congo has said: “The Lobito Corridor must not be just an infrastructure project, but a real lever for economic transformation serving the people.” The real prize is inbound – the industrial and agricultural inputs that reach inland markets The money is beginning to follow the argument. In August, the African Development Bank approved a $255 million loan and a $10 million grant for Zambia’s part in the corridor, including a new railway of about 500 km to join the Angolan line. The financing is tied to trade facilitation, agriculture and energy as well as to transport. One coast, many doors Nor is Lobito alone. Far to the north-west, five West African states – Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria – have agreed by treaty to build a six-lane highway of more than 1,000 km from Abidjan to Lagos, and to run it as a single supranational asset under its own authority. Costed at some $15 billion, the project has moved from technical studies to the investment stage. Taken together, these projects describe something larger than any one route. The Atlantic seaboard – from Abidjan round the Gulf of Guinea to Luanda and Lobito, and on past Walvis Bay to the Cape – is starting to behave less like a string of separate ports and more like a connected system. This is the coast on which Gapuma works. We deliver across 30 African nations, with a presence in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Angola and South Africa. For more than a quarter of a century we have learned that each coastal state is also a door: to its neighbours, and to the landlocked markets behind them. As the corridors mature, those doors open wider. The hard part None of this is guaranteed. The Lobito line still carries a small fraction of what its backers project for 2030. The Zambian link is only now being financed, and the Abidjan–Lagos highway has yet to break ground. New track does nothing to speed a slow customs post, and Africa’s earlier mineral railways enriched their ports while bypassing the people along the route. But the direction is set, and the opportunity is plain. The advantage will go to those who already know the ports, the paperwork and the people, and who can turn a faster route into a dependable supply. The copper will find its way to the sea regardless. The test of this new geography is what comes back up the line. Two corridors, one coast: the Atlantic seaboard from Abidjan to Cape Town.
Returning Home: Phume Mazibuko Rejoins Gapuma as Operations Associate
28 September 2026 Some people pass through an organisation; others are shaped by it, and help to shape it in return. Gapuma is delighted to announce that Phumelela Mazibuko – known to colleagues as Phume – has rejoined the company as Operations Associate, just over a year after first arriving as an intern. Her return is a source of real pride for all of us. It is also a quiet affirmation of something we have long believed: once people come to Gapuma, they become invested, and that sense of belonging stays with them. A deliberate beginning Phume’s path to Gapuma began with a recommendation. A family member pointed her towards the company as a good place to learn, and she followed up on her own initiative, writing to us with her CV and a clear account of why she wanted to enter the industry and understand how a trading business operates from the inside. That directness set the tone for her seven-week internship in the summer of 2025. She came to learn, and she did – not only about the mechanics of commodities and speciality chemicals trading, but about herself. “The internship taught me what I wanted from my working life,” she says. “I realised I wanted a dynamic role, one where I would be solving problems that have real commercial impact. That was the moment everything came into focus.” Choosing to come back What stayed with Phume after her placement ended was the combination of culture and industry. The pace, the responsibility and the people around her matched the kind of professional she wanted to become. So rather than wait for a vacancy to be advertised, she took the initiative once more. She wrote to her former supervisors to ask whether there might be room for a graduate, and what followed was a series of open, constructive conversations. Together, we shaped a role that did not yet exist, but which we recognised would be essential to Gapuma’s commercial success and to the smooth running of the business day to day. It is a story that reflects well on Phume’s resourcefulness, and on a company willing to make room for talent when it knocks on the door. The role As Operations Associate, Phume will focus on making Gapuma’s daily operations as efficient and productive as possible. Her responsibilities include: supporting the end-to-end execution of supply chain activities quality control keeping documentation organised and up to date ensuring compliance standards are upheld across the commodities and chemicals we trade, and across our suppliers and clients monitoring and tracking key performance indicators managing risk, and developing strategic solutions across each of these areas It is a wide-ranging brief, and one that places her at the heart of how the business functions. Looking ahead For Phume, the return feels less like a new start than a continuation. “Gapuma’s culture, combined with the industry itself, was exactly what I was looking for as I developed professionally,” she says. “Coming back was an easy decision. I’m thrilled to be home, and I’m genuinely excited about what lies ahead – for me, and for the company.” Welcome back, Phume. It is wonderful to have one of our own home again.
The Lights Go Out in Hull: How Energy Costs Are Redrawing the Chemical Map
23 September 2026 There is a particular silence to a mothballed chemical plant. The flares die and the pipework cools, and a site built to run without pause for decades simply stops. This week, that silence descended on Saltend, on the north bank of the Humber, where Ineos began idling its three acetyls plants. Two have already ceased production and the third will follow within days. They will remain idle until further notice. What makes the moment significant is not only what these plants make but what they were. According to Ineos, they are the last world-scale acetyls units left in Europe. Every other producer on the continent has already closed, and each closure was blamed on the same thing: energy costs that could not be competed with. A problem of physics as much as price The chemistry explains the vulnerability. At Saltend, natural gas is both the energy that drives the process and the feedstock from which acetic acid, acetic anhydride and ethyl acetate are made. When gas prices rise, the whole operation becomes uneconomic, however modern the equipment or efficient the process. Prices have risen sharply. Wholesale gas in Britain and Europe has almost doubled since July, as disruption to oil and gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz has rippled through global energy markets. “I’m sure people will find it hard to believe that we are being forced to mothball some of the most efficient plants in Europe but with gas prices now 12 times the level in the US and 8 times that of China, we just cannot compete,” said Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of Ineos. That 12-to-one ratio is Ineos’s own calculation. Independent market data put the gap between British and American gas nearer eight to ten times, depending on the hub and contract measured. On any measure, it is a chasm that no operational excellence can bridge. Part of a pattern, not an isolated event Hull is not an outlier. Yara mothballed its ammonia plant on the same Saltend site in early 2025. Ineos closed Britain’s last synthetic ethanol plant at Grangemouth. The acetyls business itself cut a fifth of its workforce last year. Each decision on its own might be read as a single company’s commercial choice. Taken together, they describe a structural shift: gas-based chemical production is leaving Europe. Ineos has not closed the door entirely. It is reportedly exploring direct purchases of American liquefied natural gas, a process that could take up to a year, and could restart if prices ease. It is also calling on the UK and EU to impose tariffs on Chinese imports. For now, however, a region that consumes these chemicals in large volumes no longer makes them at scale. Where the molecules go next Acetyls are rarely headline news, but they are everywhere. Acetic acid feeds coatings, adhesives and food production. Acetic anhydride is essential to pharmaceuticals, aspirin among them. Ethyl acetate is a workhorse solvent in printing inks, laminating adhesives and flexible packaging. The European manufacturers who depended on Hull have not stopped needing these materials. They have simply started looking elsewhere, to the United States, China, the Middle East and Asia more widely. That search has consequences well beyond Europe. When one major region turns to the global market in a hurry, cargoes are redirected, prices firm and lead times lengthen, including in markets that never bought from Hull. If tariffs are imposed, Chinese product shut out of Europe will seek homes elsewhere, including across Africa and Latin America. There is also a regulatory dimension. Acetic anhydride is a controlled drug precursor, so replacing supply from new origins requires rigorous licensing and end-user checks. “What happened in Hull this week will be felt far beyond Humberside,” said Russell Brill, Director of Purchasing at Gapuma Group. “When a region loses its last major source of a basic chemical, buyers do not stop needing it; they go looking elsewhere, and they all go looking at once. Our job is to make sure our customers are not caught in that rush: to know every credible origin, to secure volumes early and to be straight with people about where prices are heading.” The barometer moves At Gapuma, we have long treated the Strait of Hormuz as a barometer for the direction of global trade and finance. Most of the time, its readings show up in freight rates and insurance premiums. This week, the reading appeared somewhere far less expected: in a quiet chemical park in East Yorkshire. The lesson is uncomfortable but clear. Where chemistry gets made is increasingly decided by the price of energy, and that price is increasingly decided by geopolitics. As regional production gives way to longer, multi-origin supply chains, the distributor’s role changes. It is no longer simply a middleman. It is a shock absorber, a navigator and, at times, the difference between a production line that runs and one that stops. Hull’s plants may yet restart. Until they do, the gap they leave will be filled by those who saw it coming.
Panama Canal Sets New Auction Record as Korean LPG Carrier Pays $5.3 Million
26 August 2026 For the second time in a month, a South Korean shipowner has broken the record for the highest transit fee ever paid at the Panama Canal. Bloomberg reports that SK Gas, the LPG trading arm of SK Group, has agreed to pay $5.3 million for a booking slot allowing its carrier G. Spirit to transit the canal’s locks on 1 September. Without the payment, the vessel would still make the crossing, but only after a wait of up to eleven days. The record is the latest marker in a trend we highlighted last week, when the Canal Authority’s decision to cut daily transits from 3 September – falling from 36 to 34, and to 32 from 15 September – set the stage for exactly this kind of premium. It follows hard on the heels of the $4.6 million paid earlier this month by SK Shipping to move a near-identical carrier, G. Arete, on the same long-standing rotation between the Houston Ship Channel and East Asian markets. Two forces are compounding here. The first is demand-side: the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has curtailed Gulf energy shipments to Asia, pushing up LPG prices and squeezing South Korean traders, who are reportedly seeking to offset domestic losses through more profitable positioning elsewhere in the global market. The second is supply-side: an El Niño-driven drought has forced the Canal Authority to reduce both maximum vessel draught and, from this week, the number of daily transit slots available. The result is a market in which the auction premium for priority passage has become a genuine cost of doing business rather than an occasional anomaly. For trading and logistics operators, the lesson from two record-breaking bids inside a month is the same one this drought has been signalling since it began: canal capacity is no longer a given, and route planning now needs to price that risk in as a matter of course, not an exception.
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.
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.
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.
The relief is real… The certainty is not
1st July 2026 For four months, the price of oil has told the story of a war few people expected and fewer still know how to end. Now, as June closes, that story appears to be turning: Brent has slipped to around $73 a barrel, its steepest monthly fall since the pandemic and its worst quarter in six years. Petrol stations, freight desks and finance directors across the trading world are, for the first time since February, allowed to exhale. But exhaling is not the same as trusting what comes next. The rally in supply behind this fall in price is genuine enough. Tankers are moving through the Strait of Hormuz again, sanction waivers have loosened Iranian barrels back into a starved market, and the diplomatic language out of Washington and Tehran has, briefly, softened. Yet scratch beneath the relief and the foundations look considerably less solid than the headline number suggests. The current arrangement holding the strait open is not a settlement; it is a temporary courtesy, with Iran having agreed to forgo transit fees for just sixty days and reserving the right to reinstate them the moment that window closes. A ceasefire with an expiry date is not peace. It is an interval. It is worth asking, too, who is actually behind the falling price, because the answer is not simply optimism. Much of this year’s most consistent buying came from trend-following hedge funds, the quiet, algorithm-driven money that piled into long oil positions as the conflict escalated in spring. That money is now heading for the exit, not because the war is over, but because the trade has stopped trending. What looks like the market voting for peace is, in no small part, funds voting to bank their profits before the next headline turns against them. This is a market that has grown fluent in front-running its own volatility. Even regulators have taken notice: several unusually well-timed bets against oil, placed in the minutes before key American statements on Iran this year, are now the subject of scrutiny. Ask a commodities desk how confident it feels and the honesty is telling. Callum Macpherson, head of commodities at Investec, described the situation bluntly as ultimately unsustainable, adding that markets are simply finding ways to muddle through, because the ordinary business of buying cargoes and hedging exposure cannot pause for a war to make up its mind. That, in a sentence, is the position every trading, logistics and distribution business now finds itself in. So can this easing be relied upon as the basis for forward strategy? Not yet, and arguably not for some time. A lower oil price today buys breathing room, not certainty. Freight contracts, insurance premiums and supplier terms still need to be built for a strait that could tighten again with a single statement out of Washington or Tehran. The prudent response is not to chase the rally down, but to hedge as though the ceasefire is what it has repeatedly proven itself to be this year: fragile, reversible and provisional. The deal may hold. History this year suggests we should not assume it will.
Gapuma Invests in Tri-Chem Trading: Backing Momentum in African Chemical Distribution
Some partnerships are about scale. The best ones are about momentum 26 June 2026 Today we’re delighted to announce that Gapuma Group has acquired an equity stake in Tri-Chem Trading (Pty) Ltd, a fast-growing South African importer, exporter, trader and distributor of commodity and specialty chemicals serving South Africa and the wider African market. Tri-Chem’s founding leadership stays at the helm, bringing 35 years of combined industry experience, established supplier networks and a hard-won reputation for commercial excellence across mining, coatings, industrial, water treatment, manufacturing and agriculture. Our role is simple: not to change what already works, but to add the sourcing depth, supply chain infrastructure and financial backing that let the team grow faster and serve customers better. It’s exactly the kind of partnership we look for on the African continent. The timing is fitting. We’re announcing as both teams came together at Coatings for Africa (24–26 June) in Sandton, Johannesburg, with a shared ambition to bring greater value and opportunity to clients across the region. Welcome to the journey, Tri-Chem. There’s real energy in this one. Full announcement and joint statement attached here.