German asset manager MPC Capital has made its first move in the secondhand container ship market since before the pandemic.
The Hamburg-based company has swooped on a pair of traditional panamaxes to take advantage of lower asset values.
The 4,256-teu Jack London and Jonathan Swift (both built 2010) have been purchased for $17.6m each, or over $35.2m en bloc.
The ships, which will be renamed Rio Oslo and Rio Copenhagen on delivery, formerly operated in the fleet of V. Ships (Germany), part of private equity group Advent International.
The two vessels have been purchased with the balance of a four-year charter at around $26,000 through to July 2025 with French liner operator CMA CGM.
The Deutsche Borse-listed company has been tempted back into the secondhand market together with institutional investors, as it believes the earnings stream derived from the charters will leave the vessels with low residual value.
“We haven’t been buying secondhand container ships because we thought they were too expensive in the last 24 to 36 months,” said the Hamburg group’s shipping head Christian Rychly.
“Now the market has changed since the end of last year, and now it’s going up again.”
The move marks a further expansion of the shipping operations of MPC Capital, which is a sponsor and founding shareholder of Oslo-listed feedership company MPC Container Ships.
Further growth
In the newbuilding sector, MPC Capital moved into the methanol-powered container ship space in 2021, ordering four 5,500-teu vessels in South Korea.
The company later sold three of these to Norwegian leaseback owner Ocean Yield while a fourth is owned by Germany’s Elbdeich Reederei.
The third and fourth vessels in the series, the Zim Yangtze and Zim Mississippi (both built 2024), were named at a ceremony at HJ Shipbuilding & Construction on 6 February. The units are chartered to Israel’s Zim over seven years.
Other recent investments by MPC Capital have been in the shipping services sector.
In December, it teamed up with Singapore-based Wilhelmsen Ship Management to acquire 100% of third-party ship manager Zeaborn Ship Management from Germany’s Zech Maritime.
That deal will result in an operation with a total fleet of more than 150 vessels in technical management.
