If, as anticipated, 2017 does turn out as a unparalleled year in the ship S&P markets, then the records will show Henning Oldendorff has done much to create this new high watermark of deal making. Oldendorff Carriers is getting ready for a well-deserved Christmas break, adding a quartet of bulkers just before the holidays. Numerous brokers, including Allied, Fearnleys and Intermodal, report that the German carrier has now bought four 2011-built, 118,625 dwt baby capes.
The active outfit has been making headlines all year. A quick dip into the Splash archive shows Oldendorff taking an ultramax from Mitsubishi, returning to Hantong for kamsarmaxes, and flipping another post-panamax for a quick profit, all in the space of the past few months.
The latest ships added will be the UBC Ottawa, UBC Odessa, UBC Olimbus and UBC Oristano. Brokers disagree how much each ship fetched. First Allied put the price at $18m each in what is noted in broking reports to be a bank driven deal. Later this week, however, the sale was noted to cost $2m more per vessel, by several broking houses. The market value per ship is set at $17.23m according to pricing portal, VesselsValue.com. The ships belong to another German mammoth, the troubled Hartmann Group. This is the second time this year the outfit is reported letting go of a string of ships in a single sale. This summer the privately owned Leer-headquartered outfit sold seven German feeder boxships to Tufton Oceanic in another bank driven sale.
On the container side, Braemar ACM has details of an interesting sale. Braemar ACM reports that George Economou’s Cardiff Marine made a handsome profit on an 11,000 teu newbuilding resale from Jiangsu Yangzijiang. The ship was ordered some years back at an undisclosed price. Danish investment company Navigare Capital Partners is linked to the ship. The new Copenhagen outfit is said to have paid $67m for the ship, roughly $2m higher than US-listed containership owner Seaspan paid for a sister vessel some months back. The purchase come months after the fund picked up its first bulker, at that time Navigare was reportedly making its debut boxship deal, however then Navigare dismissed the reports as premature. Navigare is fast building up a diversified portfolio of assets in both wet and dry, so far picking up three modern tankers, and a supramax.
Advance Shipping & Trading reports that Angeliki Frangou’s boxship start-up Navios Maritime Containers has sealed a deal with Hanseatic Lloyd for four ships – the APL Atlanta, APL Los Angeles, APL Denver and APL Oakland, all built 2008. The package deal is estimated to be worth around $100m. The 4,250 teu ships where ordered in 2004 by Bremen-based Hanseatic Lloyd at China’s New Century Shipbuilding on the back of 12-year charters.
Fearnleys, meanwhile, has revealed details of a sale by Belgian tanker owner Euronav. On Monday Euronav announced the sale of 2004-built VLCC Flandre for $45m saying the ship has been sold to an operator of offshore floating platforms and delivery is scheduled before the end of the year. It will then be converted to an FPSO. Fearnleys reveals it’s the Japanese offshore company MODEC who will take over the ship.
Last week Italian owner D’Amico announced that it had sold and chartered back a 48,700 dwt product tanker, the 2005-built MR High Presence for a price of $14.14m. This week, Allied reported that the taker of the deal is Chinese owner Shandong Shipping. The deal comes with a six-year time charter at $14,000 per day. This will be the third MR tanker in Shandong Shipping’s fleet list. It appears that the Chinese and Italian owners have been talking about the ship for months. At the beginning of the year broker sources told Splash that the emerging Chinese tanker player snapped up the same ship for $15m and another report from the same time revealed that the sale came with a five-year time charter back at $14,250.
