Consort Bunkers of Singapore continues to feast on the fleet of bunker tankers of the Lim family-controlled Ocean Tankers and Xihe group to fuel its expansion plans.
The company, which owns its vessels via subsidiary Consort Tankers, is also ordering more ships in China.
On the second-hand front Consort has concluded a deal to acquire the 4,000-dwt bunker tanker Marine Hope (built 2009) from Xihe Holdings special-purpose vehicle (SPV) An Tai Shipping.
The IHS Ships Register indicates that ownership of the vessel was recently transferred to Consort, a move that the company has confirmed to Tradewinds.
Consort also confirmed that it has concluded further deals to acquire another two bunker tankers, the 7,000-dwt Marine Kite (built 2009) and the 6,800-dwt Marine Tiger (built 2012).
The pair are coming directly from Ocean Tankers SPV An Ju Shipping. They will be handed over to Consort later in December.
The recent purchases bring the total number of second-hand vessels acquired by Consort this year to five.
In September the company acquired the 5,200-dwt bunker tanker Marine Swift (built 2011) from Xihe Holdings, while at the same time it bought the 7,600-dwt bunker tanker Heredia Sea (built 2008 from a Dubai-based single-ship entity called Cinnamon Shipping, which industry sources claimed was affiliated with Glencore.
The Heredia Sea was bought to support the company’s UAE operations, which are run under the banner of Pearl Marine.
Chinese newbuildings
Consort’s expansion plans are now moving into the newbuilding arena. The company confirmed market suggestions that it was lining up orders for up to seven 8,000-dwt bunker tankers in China.
It said that these vessels will be identical to the five M-Class 8,000-dwt bunker tankers it ordered at Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industries that were delivered in 2018 and 2019.
These vessels were designed with three-line segregation that allows them to carry three different grades of fuel at one time.
While not naming the shipbuilder, the company said the contract “is in progress”, and new ships will be delivered in stages beginning in the second quarter of 2022.
It noted that while the earlier newbuilding were for fleet replacement purposes, the new orders have been made to facilitate expansion.
Industry sources with knowledge of Consort’s expansion drive said that the company is moving to fill the void left by the collapse of Ocean Tankers, once amongst the largest of Singapore’s bunker tanker operators, and other smaller operators that have exited the market.
“The problem is that once ships from these operators are sold, they don’t necessarily stay in Singapore,” explained one bunker industry source.
Demand for bunker tankers has also been increasing because the need to separate the many different blends of IMO 2020-compliant fuel has driven the efficiency of tankers down.
The different grades require operators to either clean tanks between different cargoes or keep vessels dedicated to specific blends.
Consort operates a large fleet of owned and chartered bunker tankers that are based in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and China.
