Peter Dohle Schiffahrts is building a presence in the booming capesize sector at a time of record deal flow in the space.
The Hamburg-based company is said to have bought two capesizes just six months after it entered the sector with its first acquisition.
The company is named as the buyer of the 176,600-dwt Yue May and 176,400-dwt Zhong May (both built 2011).
The vessels were reported sold by Foremost Maritime in February for about $27m each.
TradeWinds has contacted Peter Dohle for confirmation and comment.
The German shipowner is best known for its presence in container shipping but has a growing exposure in the smaller and medium bulker sizes.
The company made its first move into the big bulker sector in August last year, purchasing a vessel from the fleet of Idan Ofer-controlled Eastern Pacific Shipping.
The 175,800-dwt scrubber-fitted Alba (ex-Mount Apo, built 2012) was reported sold to Peter Dohle for $24.7m deal.
Until then, Peter Dohle’s largest bulkers were a pair of mini-capesize vessels, the 118,935-dwt Edgar (built 2011) and Laura D (built 2012).
The company also operates smaller bulkers in the Hanseatic Unity Handysize Pool with around 30 ships between 32,000 dwt and 40,000 dwt.
If confirmed, the acquisition of another two large bulkers by Peter Dohle would prove well-timed, with prices rising fast for capesize vessels since the start of the year.
Peter Dohle’s fleet of container ships, bulk carriers and multipurpose vessels are valued at over $1bn, with its fleet of around a dozen bulkers accounting for around one-quarter of the total, according to VesselsValue estimates.
The move into larger bulkers comes alongside a generational shift that saw Jan Dohle, the elder son of Jochen Dohle, join the company’s board of managing directors at the start of the year.
According to Clarksons, over 200 bulkers of 17m dwt were reported sold in the secondhand market this year.
Twenty-seven of these have been capesizes, which is a record number of deals for these vessels during the first quarter, as Clarksons observed in a report last Friday.
Deal flow and values have been rising as the freight market enjoyed its best start to the year in more than a decade.
“Values for bulkers have been going from strength to strength this year, up across all ages and size categories,” VesselsValue said in a report.
It noted that capesize and supramax ships had seen the biggest bump, with a 20-year-old capesize of 180,000 dwt up almost 40%, to the highest levels since 2010.
