Charterparties are contracts for the hire of a vessel (or part of, or space onboard, a vessel). Time charters are a type of charterparty where the charterer hires the vessel for a period of time. They normally hire the vessel with all its equipment, the Master and crew and in exchange the owner asks them to pay a ‘hire’ charge, which is paid daily or monthly.
Charterers in these situations may be buying and selling goods and require the use of a vessel for a number of months to transport goods in an area or in different parts of the world. Obtaining a vessel on time charter for a three month period and completing, say, seven voyages, would generally be much more cost effective than entering into seven seperate voyage charterparties with differnt ships.
Another scenario is where you identify potential demand for extra tonnage in acertain area (say bulk commodities being moved from northern Austrlia to Singapore and Hong Kong).You can then time charter a vessel from a shipowner and offer it for voyage charter on these routes. If successful, the freight you collect each week, or month, could far exceed the hire charges you are liable to pay to the shipowner and the admin costs of arranging the voyage charters.
Many of the standard forms of time charterparty contain the suffix ‘time’ (BALTIME, SHELLTIME etc.), which gives a clue as to the type of charter they relate to, but a more extensive list of the main forms of time charter, and the cargoes commonly carried under them, is set out below:
BALTIME 1939 (general)
SHELLTIME (offshore)
BARGEHIRE 94 (barges)
BOXTIME (containerships)
GENTIME (general)
NYPE 93 ‘New York Product Exchange’ (general)
SUPPLYTIME 89 (offshore)
