Djakarta Lloyd has emerged as the buyer of a supramax bulker that GoodBulk said it had sold for a hefty profit earlier this month.
The 55,000-dwt bulk carrier Aquakula (built 2007) is slated to join the Djakarta Lloyd fleet shortly, sources close to the Indonesian company told TradeWinds this week.
In early August GoodBulk told investors that it had booked a gain of $3.8m from the $12.1m sale of the vessel.
Djakarta Lloyd, Indonesia’s oldest shipping company, is in the process of transforming itself from a struggling liner company to a bulk logistics player.
It made its first dry-bulk move in February last year when it bought the 55,700-dwt bulker Nord Maru (built 2006) off Norden for $12m. That ship now trades under the name Dharma Lautan Intan.
Brokers who work the Indonesian sales and purchase market say that Djakarta Lloyd has been scouting around for supramax tonnage since December last year.
As a government-owned company it has to procure its vessels through an often cumbersome tender process that can lead to delays when the ships that it is eyeing are snapped up by more agile owners while the tender process is still underway.
Djakarta Lloyd’s bulkers are used purely in the Indonesian domestic coal trade, where it competes with numerous private companies for coal contracts of affreightment (COAs) from state-owned electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) and other private power producers.
While it works on adding more bulk carriers to its fleet, the fate of the company’s unwanted containerships remains unclear. Several larger feeder-sized vessels were sold for scrap in 2018, leaving it with a handful of smaller coastal containerships. Most of these have all been in lay-up for several years.
The company also appears to have recently ordered a small 6,500-dwt products tanker at domestic shipbuilder Surabaya Dok PT Persero that will go on long-term charter to state oil major Pertamina when it is delivered in June next year.
Company observers say it is open to adding more such ships if it is able to obtain suitable long-term contracts.
Djakarta Lloyd is owned by Indonesia’s Ministry of Sea Communications, a government body that covers a wide spectrum of domestic shipping activities through subsidiary companies that operate everything from tugs and dredgers to livestock carriers and passenger ships.
