Greece’s Aegean Shipping Management is beefing up its newbuilding orderbook at Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry, its favourite yard.
The company said in a statement on Christmas eve that it exercised an option for a third aframax vessel at the yard, in continuation of an earlier deal announced in September for two such newbuildings.
The tally is set to rise even further, to four aframaxes, following signature of a letter of intent (LOI) for yet another unit, the statement added.
Aegean’s statement does not offer any additional details on the project, apart from saying that its new aframaxes will be certified with high-class eco notations, like the rest of its “Green Fleet” of tankers.
The newbuildings are to be delivered one after the other between June 2022 to March 2023.
TradeWinds was told in September that Aegean's new vessels, to be built at Cosco's Yangzhou yard, will not be equipped with scrubbers.
The newly inked firm aframaxes bring the number of vessels that Aegean has ordered at Cosco over the past four years to a total 12 ships.
Half of them are bulkers commissioned on behalf of Melissandis’ bulker outfit Aegean Eco Carriers, formerly called Aegean Shipping Dry Bulk. Cosco delivered that kamsarmax sextet in 2019 and 2020.
“As of today, the Aegean Shipping fleet consist of newbuilding vessels only – neither resales nor secondhand vessels,” the company’s statement said.
Aegean’s “Green Fleet” of oil carriers consists of three MR2s and two aframax tankers in the water. Upon completion of its four new tanker newbuildings, it will have an average fleet of just 2.9 years, the company said.
The order provides further evidence of animal spirits stirring in the shipping world as a global vaccination campaign begins to roll back Covid-19, spurring hopes for an economic rebound.
"Two weeks before 2020 ends, the newbuilding activity is sending out encouraging signals for the prospects of a recovery," Athens-based brokers Intermodal said in a note on 22 December.
"There is evident improvement with regards to newbuilding orders surfacing in the market, while at the same time asset prices for newbuilding units remain constant across both the dry bulk and tanker sectors," the analysts added.
