Third-party ship management in Greece has made gains over the past few years. An increasing number of players offer an ever-wider range of services out of the world’s biggest shipowning centre.
The inexorable rise of Greek shipping has encouraged established giants of the trade, such as Columbia Shipmanagement, V.Group and Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, to grow their footprint there and use it as a springboard to offer services not just to domestic clients but international ones.
Some local shipowners have got in on the act too, inviting peers to entrust them with their vessels.
In the teeth of difficult market conditions, tanker pools have also been active, with veteran Heidmar using the country as a base for its revived operations and IT outfit Signal Ocean continuing to run the aframax pool it set up six years ago.
Different players have developed different niches.
V.Ships Greece has been fortifying and expanding its presence in bulkers and container ships, and has the technical management of about 50 vessels, according to the Greek Shipping Directory and S&P Global.
V.Ships itself says that its Greek office has a total 78 ships under management.
Long-standing anchor client Costamare said in its latest annual filing that V.Ships Greece was providing technical, crewing, provisioning, bunkering, sale-and-purchase and accounting services to 17 of its container ships and 19 dry bulk vessels.
Athens-based, US-listed Seanergy and spin-off United Maritime have entrusted the company with six large bulkers.
V.Ships Greece is also listed with non-Greek clients, such as financial owner Mount Street Capital, which has placed six container ships with the company.
Non-Greek business was also very much on the mind of Columbia Shipmanagement when it announced two years ago that it would set up its own independent office in Athens.
The Schoeller Holdings-controlled ship manager terminated its 12-year joint venture with Tsakos Group and set up its own, tanker-focused unit in Greece, the CSM Hellas Tanker Management Centre of Excellence.
In 2023, CSM Hellas entered a strategic agreement to manage Seacon Shipping Group’s Chinese-owned and operated ships.
The agreement focused on product tankers, LPG carriers and LNG carriers.
Gas carriers are an area in which the Greek office of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, or BSM, has developed a particular expertise.
BSM (Hellas) manages close to 40 ships, more than half of which are LPG and LNG carriers.
TradeWinds reported as early as 2019 about BSM (Hellas) clinching business with local clients entering that segment.
Now it has used that foothold to win third-party management for big, non-Greek players such as commodity giant Gunvor and JP Morgan-linked Oceonix Services, which has placed a number of LNG carrier newbuildings with the company.
BSM (Hellas) has repeated the trick with LPG carriers, winning business from Evalend Shipping, the fast-growing Athens-based company controlled by Kriton Lendoudis.
Greece has been fertile ground for pool players as well.
Hellenic clients such as Evangelos Marinakis have been instrumental in the success of traditional pool player Heidmar in rebuilding its business.
Heidmar manages around 50 tankers and a dozen bulk carriers under pool and commercial management agreements.
Apart from Marinakis’ Capital Ship Management, its client list included Cosco Shipping, Liquimar Tankers, Great Eastern Shipping and Metrostar Management Corp.
In April, Heidmar expanded into offering technical management services with the acquisition of Landbridge Ship Management (HK).
At a time when tanker pool players worldwide are shutting down or seeing their fleets shrink, building and maintaining a presence in this notoriously fickle business is a testament to strength in itself.
Clients tend to move out of tanker pools when times are good — either by selling vessels or clawing back their commercial control to cash in on soaring values and high freight rates.
In August, Heidmar client Marinakis sold nine VLCCs to Saudi Arabia’s Bahri that will eventually leave the pool.
Signal Ocean, an operator set up in Athens by Ioannis Martinos six years ago, has also wound down its MR pool and has nine aframaxes — the core segment in which it started business.
This article is part of a special report series on the future of ship management.
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