Eletson Gas and Evergas are teaming up to operate 15 LPG ships in a new pool.
Based in Singapore, the E3 Pool will bring together the owners’ semi-refrigerated/ethylene-capable vessels.
The new venture will begin on 30 January from Eletson’s offices in Piraeus and London and Evergas bases in Copenhagen and Singapore.
The 15 modern ships will be boosted by four more due to be delivered to the Greek company over the next year. Eletson is contributing six initially, with Evergas deploying nine vessels.
Evergas CEO Steffen Jacobsen told TradeWinds: “We have been having these discussions with Eletson for about a year.
“We obviously believe that a bit of consolidation in this market makes sense and there have been pools before in the same market.”
But he added: “We do not envisage that the cooperation with Eletson will expand beyond the pool for the ethylene carriers as described.”
A spokesman for Eletson Gas told TradeWinds that the company was probably not big enough to offer the number of COAs that it would have liked.
“The ethylene market has a lot of long-haul business with trips from the US to the Far East and Arabian Gulf to Far East. Now we will be in a position to offer more COAs to customers,” he said.
As to further consolidation, he pointed to the owner’s five mid-size LPG carriers (MGCs) as a possible route to further tie-ups.
“Our door is always open. We have five MGCs, which is not a large amount of vessels. It would be nice to have a larger fleet to offer customers something similar to E3.
“These things take a long time to put together, however. It’s a question of building up trust.”
Efficiency the key
The aim with E3 is to create a single point of contact for cargo owners, the companies said.
A larger fleet will provide more flexibility and more options for charterers, reduce voyage-related expenses through optimisation of voyages and cut greenhouse-gas emissions, they said.
Eletson gas chairman and CEO Vassilis Kertsikoff said: “The petrochemical market has a number of established trade routes that require critical mass to service properly.
“The cooperation with Evergas in the context of the E3 pool will give us the ability to offer our customers the high level of service and the optionality that they require.”
Jacobsen added: “With the combined expertise and resources of the two companies behind it the E3 Pool will be uniquely placed in the market to give a truly global service in this segment.”
Eletson Gas, which is owned by Eletson Holdings and Blackstone Group, has the five MGCs, plus two handymaxes, one of which is chartered in, and five handysize ethylene-capable vessels.
Four more ethylene handysizes are coming this year and in 2018.
Denmark’s Evergas, wholly owned by Greenship Gas & Jaccar Holdings, has six 5,000-cbm pressurized vessels, nine 12,000-cbm semi-refrigerated/ethylene ships and eight 27,500-cbm multigas LNG carriers.
