Faced with a rapid downturn in shipping, and credit challenges of their own, shipowners large and small are now mothballing or even scrapping ships and waiting for a turnaround—if circumstances allow.

“Shipping is an entrepreneurial game, and there are people losing their shirts at the moment,” executive director of the Australian Shipowners Association, Teresa Hatch, says.

“But it might be the bust that we had to have.

"Shipyards have been so far behind on meeting demand, people have been waiting up to four years for a ship.”

Manager of ABB’s Barley Marketing Operations, Rob Green, says getting a 60,000 tonne bulk shipment of grain to Saudi Arabia three months ago cost US$90-$100 per tonne.

Now, that's down to US$25-$30 a tonne — a rate that hasn’t been seen for at least five years.

Mr Green says the downturn has been so steep that there is now the threat that older ships will be scrapped, creating another cargo shortage if economic conditions pick up again.

“While there will be an impact, no-one is talking about panicking,” he says.

Ms Hatch agreed, saying that there are now likely to be a lot of small bulk carriers vying for contracts to ship grain.

But like the financial meltdown itself, it’s difficult to see what the ultimate consequences of the shipping downturn will be.

Whole shipping lines have frozen up, according to a Business Spectator report on Tuesday, because shipowners don’t want to take the risk of carting cargo for clients who may not be able to pay because of the credit crisis.

“Like many of the other clogged arteries of global finance, letters of credit and therefore global shipping could presumably unclog fairly quickly if the interbank credit market got moving again,” wrote the article’s author, Alan Kohler.

“But a big fall in shipping rates, as measured by the key price indicator, the Baltic Dry Index, is always a harbinger of a downturn in trade and therefore economic activity.”

The Baltic Dry Index of bulk shipping rates has collapsed 89pc since May, from 12,000 to 1355.