Greek company Soloi Inc is about to halve the size of its fleet after shedding a pair of supramaxes and circulating a panamax for sale, Athens-based brokers report.
Chinese interests are said to have picked up the company’s 57,100-dwt sisterships Maria and Lietta (both built 2010) for a total of $17.5m.
The move comes about three weeks after other Greek brokers said Soloi offered the 76,600-dwt panamax bulker Faye (built 2010) for sale.
Soloi did not respond to a request for comment.
It is not known if the deals mark a move to reduce Soloi's exposure to the ailing dry bulk market, or if they are part of a fleet renewal.
The Maria, Lietta and Faye are Soloi’s oldest units.
The company is known to have a preference for Jinling Shipyard, in Jiangsu, China.
The Maria and Lietta were the first newbuildings Soloi ordered at the yard.
Profitable play
The company contracted them in 2008, after a successful asset play on the 76,000-dwt panamax bulker Kanaris (built 2002).
Soloi bought the Kanaris — its debut shipping deal — in 2006 for about $47.7m and flipped it a year later for $62.25m in a charter-linked deal.
The company was founded in 2006 by Johnny Kalimeris and Stelios Joannou, a scion of the family behind construction group Joannou & Paraskevaides.
Soloi has made few headlines since then. After ordering the Maria and Lietta, it contracted another pair of supramaxes and a kamsarmax at Jinling, which are still trading in its fleet.
In 2018, it made a rare move on the secondhand market with the purchase of the 76,600-dwt FD Vittorio Raiola (built 2010), a panamax bulker sold by Taiyo Kaiun of Japan for about $18m.
The Japanese-built vessel, renamed Faye, is the only ship in Soloi's fleet not to have been built at Jinling.
An eventual deal for the Faye could earn Soloi about $13.7m, according to estimates by VesselsValue — which is far below the price it paid for the ship two years ago.
