Oslo: Norway’s Ocean Yield has agreed to acquire four 115,000 dwt LR2 product tankers which are currently on order from Navig8 Product Tankers at Sungdong Shipbuilding in Korea.
Then four vessels, which are scheduled for delivery from January through to July next year, will be chartered back to Navig8 on 13-year bareboat charters. Ocean Yield said that Navig8 will have options to acquire the vessels during the charter period, the first option at seven years into the charter.
The price for each vessel is $49.5m, which is at original yard cost and around 20% below current market value. In May, Navig8 Product Tankers offloaded three of the tanker newbuilds to Scorpio Tankers for an aggregate sum of $178.5m.
Lars Solbakken, chief executive officer of Ocean Yield, commented: “We are pleased to announce the investment in 4 newbuilding product tankers as it allows us to continue to diversify our portfolio and the transaction fits very well with our strategy to invest in modern vessels with long term charters.”
In April Ocean Yield did a similar deal with Navig8, when it bought eight chemical tanker newbuildings for $306.8m from Navig8 Chemical Tankers, with a 15-year bareboat charter attached.
