One of Turkey’s fastest growing shipping companies, Beks Shipmanagement and Trading, has sold a popular ice-class aframax in an overheated market.
Multiple sources report the owner has sold the 15-year-old scrubber fitted 115,000-dwt Beks Atlantica for around $33m. Sellers paid about $15.5m for the tanker in September last year. Beks has beefed up its tanker arm all year, adding four MR tankers, one aframax, one LR1 and one LR2, all ships built between 2003 and 2005.
Russian interests are on track to double the number of ice class aframaxes they control this year
Another Samsung-built ice class aframax is reported sold by Evangelos Marinakis-led Capital Ship Management. The Aristodimos, bought by Capital in late 2018 for $12.5m, went for a similar price to the Beks Atlantica.
Ice-class aframaxes have been in high demand in the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, mostly acquired by undisclosed buyers, something analysts at Braemar explained was normally a “tell-tale for owners ready to deploy the vessels in sanctioned trades”.
The 124 strong ice-class aframax/LR2 fleet with a rating of 1C and higher account for nearly four-fifths of all crude oil exported from Russian ports in the Baltic Sea during most winters, according to Braemar. Pre-war, Russian interests controlled around 20 of these ships, a figure that could double by the end of the year.
