Libya’s General National Maritime Transport Company (GNMTC) has continued its fleet renewal with the disposal of two older aframaxes.
European shipbrokers said the 105,000-dwt Ashahda and Adafera (both built 2004) have gone to unnamed buyers for a little more than $30m each.
The Sumitomo-built tankers are valued near $30m by VesselsValue, compared to $15m a year ago.
The ships were bought from Greece’s Dynacom way back in 2007.
They are two of GNMTC’s oldest tankers. There are also two MR1s dating from 2004, with others being built up to 2009.
Then there is an age gap to eight new ships delivered from 2021 up to this year. All are LR2s and aframaxes.
Two aframaxes and two suezmaxes built in 2006 and 2008 were sold by the owner last year.
Before selling the latest duo, GNMTC bought two Atlas Maritime aframax resales for $76m in February: the 115,100-dwt Delaware Star and Galveston Star (both built 2023).
This is a pattern similar to the one observed in 2020 and 2021, when GNMTC bought three aframax resales at about the same time it offloaded the same number of older vessels of the same type.
The Delaware Star and Galveston Star were two of the five aframax newbuildings that Atlas chief executive Leon Patitsas began ordering at DH Shipbuilding in November 2020, the low point of the coronavirus crisis, for between $45m and $46m each.
That was the lowest price for such newbuildings in two decades. In an interview with TradeWinds in November 2021, Patitsas described these orders as “perfectly timed”.
Managers at GNMTC have not commented on the deals.
