Greece’s Embiricos family is believed to be selling a container ship at a record level, doubling the money it spent to order it as a newbuilding 10 years ago.
The $140m price tag for the 6,881-teu wide-beam Rhodos (built 2013), reported by brokers in London and Athens on 24 January, could be the highest ever achieved by a container ship in the secondhand market.
The buyer is said to be CMA CGM, which already operates the ship.
A spokeswoman for the French line declined to comment. Managers at International Maritime Enterprises SAM, the Embiricos family’s Monaco-based outfit, did not respond to an email request to discuss the matter.
Both companies have a policy not to comment on commercial transactions.
The Rhodos is one of three boxships that Embiricos ordered in 2011 at Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries for $72m apiece.
Upon delivery, Embiricos put the trio on long-term hires with Maersk at between $30,000 and $35,000 per day.
The Skiathos, another ship in that group, was sold to SFL Corp in May 2021 and has since been trading as SFL Maui.
The Rhodos, meanwhile, passed under CMA CGM operations. The ship last made headlines in June, when it evacuated seafarers at Madeira after two of them fell ill with Covid-19.
The $140m that CMA CGM is reportedly spending to buy the ship now is up from last-done and could indicate that the remainder of its charter was cancelled, brokers speculated.
The previous record was set last September, when Andrianopoulos family outfit Cape Shipping sold the 6,882-teu Cape Chronos (renamed Simba, built 2015) to OM Maritime for between $132m and $135m.
Managers at OM Maritime, however, disputed the price tag as “far too high”. In October, Seasure reported that CMA CGM had fixed the Simba for a month at $155,000 per day.
With gusto
Buoyed by the container shipping boom, big liner companies have been swooping with gusto on the vessels offered for sale by the Greeks.
Three of them alone, CMA CGM, Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) and Wan Hai Lines, splurged $2.3bn among them to buy 46 Greek-owned container ships last year, according to provisional TradeWinds data.
MSC has been by far the biggest buyer, acquiring 24 Greek container ships over that period while MSC and Wan Hai Lines picked up 11 each. These purchases have helped MSC overtake Maersk to become the world’s biggest ocean carrier.
Greeks sold 89 container ships last year in deals worth about $3.6bn.
The Embiricos family has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of that trend. International Maritime Enterprises offloaded nine vessels last year to companies like Costamare, MSC, SFL Corp and TS Lines.
It can be safely assumed that all these sales have been spectacularly profitable for the Embiricos clan, one of Greece’s most traditional and successful shipping families.
Lomar Shipping, another Greek-controlled company, has raised more than $1bn from the sale of about 25 container ships since the beginning of last year, as TradeWinds reported.
