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Marinakis makes waves in the aframax sector

Evangelos Marinakis has clearly noted tanker bargains are there to be had. Having kept his powder dry all year when it came to tanker S&P deals, the Greek owner has started Q4 with a whirlwhind of deals in the knowledge that prices for crude tankers are approaching historic lows.

Earlier this week Splash reported Capital had beaten out a number of other Greek owners, paying $13.4m, for TCC’s aframax CSK Shelton.

In other tanker news, Capital has sold four newbuild VLCCs at Samsung Heavy Industries in a sale and leaseback deal to Chinese financiers CMB Financal Leasing and ICBC Leasing.

Aware of the cheap aframaxes on offer, Splash understands Marinakis has added three more tankers, taking over the 2006-built BP trio British Kestrel, the British Falcon and the British Eagle, paying $13.7m per ship. BP has been actively pruning its older ships in its fleet over the past year.

The ships had earlier been linked with the UK’s Union Maritime, however, Union Maritime was unable to secure financing for all eight BP ships it had originally targeted leaving the door open for Marinakis to pounce.

Vintage aframaxes are in demand at the moment. Fearnly’s weekly report out yesterday noted that in the North Sea owners are seeing the best returns year to date while in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea rates finally moved upwards.

Hans Thaulow

Hans Henrik Thaulow is an Oslo-based journalist who has been covering the shipping industry for the last 15 years. As well as some work for the Informa Group, Hans was the China correspondent for TradeWinds. He also contributes to Maritime CEO magazine. Hans’ shipping background extends to working as a shipbroker trainee with Simpson, Spence & Young in Hong Kong.
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