France’s Jaccar Holdings is confident of soon selling the fleet of gas carrier subsidiary Evergas as part of a court deal with creditors.
The 10 vessels were put up for sale in February to help creditors recover debt after Jaccar principal Jacques de Chateauvieux stepped down from the group in 2021.
The Evergas fleet is worth around $700m, including six chartered LPG carriers, according to independent broker valuations.
New Jaccar president Philippe Soulie told Le Marin daily that the group is in good shape to sell the company.
Three potential buyers, all from outside France, are on a shortlist to buy the vessels: two very large ethane carriers and six multigas vessels can serve niche small-ship LNG trades where demand is growing.
Soulie believes that an agreement can be reached in the coming weeks with one of the interested parties.
“These are very different candidates, funds specialising in infrastructure or maritime groups that are not yet present in this sector,” he said.
“The good news is that all our activities are in very good working order”, Soulie added.
Gas shipping operations are evolving, according to the president.
He called the sector extremely buoyant, with very good visibility.
CO2 business to expand
The core ethane transport business is seeing strong demand from the global petrochemical industry.
And the transport of captured CO2 could outstrip ethane volumes in future, the president said.
Evergas has joined forces with shipowner Ultragas to form Dan-Unity to chase this market.
Denmark-based Evergas operates 16 high-specification ships, including six small chartered-in LPG carriers.
All are built from 2012 on and the VLECs and multigas units are bareboat-chartered back from Chinese leasing companies.
Jaccar had debt of around €1bn at the end of 2019.
De Chateauvieux is a former principal of Bourbon Offshore, which was taken over by its banks in 2019.
Evergas was profitable last year and has what it calls a win-win partnership with its main customer and the charterer of its ships, the Ineos group, which Soulie called “a formidable development engine”.
