The fleet sell-off of failed Singaporean fuel trader and tanker operator Coastal Oil Holdings reached a conclusion with the sale of a pair of handysize product tankers and two bunker tankers.
The 24,200-dwt product tankers Atalanta (built 2015) and Babylon (built 2017) were sold last week, according to officials at the Sheriff of Singapore’s office.
The Atalanta has gone to Denko Bright Shipping, a Singapore-registered single-ship company that has renamed it Denko Bright and placed it under the commercial and technical management of tanker operator and shipmanager Norstar Shipping.
Mortgage claims of $18m
Norstar managing director Tom Bonehill said Denko Bright Shipping is owned by Asian investors with whom Norstar has worked for the past five years.
“We handle all their shipping interests, from arranging the purchase of the vessels to operating them,” he said.
Tanker industry sources told TradeWinds the Babylon has been sold to a Chinese company, whose identity has yet to be revealed in the market.
Both tankers were arrested in January by Singapore’s DBS Bank against mortgage claims totalling about $18m. They were put up for auction in April but failed to sell. The Babylon went back under the hammer in May and again failed to sell.
Although no auction had been scheduled since May, court officials described the ships as having been sold through what they termed a sheriff’s sale. They did not release pricing details.
The ships were described in pre-auction surveys as being in very good condition. Tanker brokers say little time is being wasted by putting them back into service. The Denko Bright is already being made available in the charter market.
The unique pair was designed to operate in coastal waters and restricted waterways. Each is fitted with twin screws and two engines.
TradeWinds has also learned that Coastal Oil’s two remaining bunker tankers, the 2,300-dwt Coastal Mercury and 2,240-dwt Coastal Saturn (both built 2012) were sold earlier in July to a Singaporean entity called Marline Trust.
Neither ship was under arrest at the time it was sold, which suggests the sales were handled directly by the Coastal Oil liquidators in cooperation with creditors.
Singaporean corporate registry data indicates that Marline Trust was incorporated in April this year. It has no listed phone numbers and could not be reached for comment on its plans for the ships.
