Trading and chartering giant Gunvor has opened up on its interests in the tanker market, as it called off a refinery sale due to the profit it is racking up this year.
Chief executive Torbjorn Tornqvist told Reuters that since 2017, the group has amassed a fleet numbering 17 ships through joint ventures.
Its stakes vary from 33% to 50%.
Tornqvist said Gunvor has been taking advantage of cheap vessel prices.
In addition, chartering arm Clearlake Shipping has more than 50 tankers on time charter.
Joint ventures revealed
Last year, TradeWinds revealed that German shipowners Rowil Ponta and Richard Grube had joined forces with the trader on a $50m-plus LR1 tanker project using the Norwegian KS (limited partnership) system.
The partners snapped up three secondhand product tankers in structures organised by Clarksons Platou Project Finance and were understood to be closing in on ship number four.
Ponta and Grube’s Nordic Hamburg and Gunvor's Just-C Shipping are equity investors in the new vehicle, as is Jacob Shipping, which will take technical management of the tankers.
Just-C is its wholly-owned entity dedicated to shipowning.
Before that, TradeWinds reported that Clearlake had ordered two LR2s at South Korea's Daehan Shipbuilding in what appeared to be a shipowning debut for the group.
The two 114,000-dwt ships were contracted in October by the company, for delivery in August and November 2019.
John Dragnis-led Oceangold Tankers, a partner of Gunvor, was first linked to the deal.
Scrubber retrofit cancelled
After a turbulent summer, Tornqvist said he sees the freight market coming under even more pressure as tankers are fitted with scrubbers.
“Installing scrubbers is not as easy as previously thought. It takes much longer at shipyards and if one ship is delayed, instead of a 30-day wait, it becomes 45 or 50 days," he added.
"I cancelled one retrofit because it was a two-month wait out of water, meaning a loss of $2m; it kills the value.”
Sale scrapped
Gunvor has made gross profit of $800m in the first nine months of 2019, allowing it to scrap the proposed sale of its 110,000-barrel-per-day Ingolstadt refinery in Germany.
It has also put on hold the disposal of its stake in a Russian products terminal at Ust Luga.
The LNG business has seen shipments already surpass the 2018 level of 176 voyages.
Its traded oil and LNG volumes were 3.3m barrels per day last year.
It suffered a loss of $330m in 2018 and had put some assets up for sale as a result.
