ContainersEurope

Bodouroglou sends nine-year-old twins for scrap

Brokers report of another very young pair of boxships being sent for scrap. Michael Bodouroglou’s Box Ships has decided to scrap sister ships Box Kingfish and Box Marlin. The two 5,095 teu vessels were built in South Korea in 2007, and had been on charter to CMA CGM previously.

The Greek owner managed to get a price of $285 per ldt for both ships giving Bodouroglou $11.72m.

Box Ships is now left with just three ships in its fleet.

Panamax boxships of 10 years or less have become a common sight on India’s shipbreaking beaches this year as rates for this ship type have plummeted in dramatic fashion since the opening of the expanded Panama Canal. Indeed, one Splash reader has suggested panamaxes should be renamed alangamaxes.

In the first 10 months of the year a record 500,000 teu has been scrapped, 4.2 times more teu than the scrapping activity for the same months in 2015, according to Bimco.

With the last three months accounting for more than 41% of the total demolition in 2016, the activity is picking up and is primarily generated by the panamax container ships. The demolition of panamax containerships in teu accounts for 47% of the total demolition in 2016.

Tim Huxley, chairman of Hong Kong’s Mandarin Shipping, discussed the troubled sector at a breakfast in Hong Kong last month.

“The destruction in equity seen in these ships in the past few years has been devastating,” Huxley said. In his 34 years in the industry, Huxley said he had never seen a subsector in shipping destroyed so fast.

Sam Chambers

Starting out with the Informa Group in 2000 in Hong Kong, Sam Chambers became editor of Maritime Asia magazine as well as East Asia Editor for the world’s oldest newspaper, Lloyd’s List. In 2005 he pursued a freelance career and wrote for a variety of titles including taking on the role of Asia Editor at Seatrade magazine and China correspondent for Supply Chain Asia. His work has also appeared in The Economist, The New York Times, The Sunday Times and The International Herald Tribune.
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