The Heidmar-Signal Maritime alliance has taken another hit, with New York-based owner International Seaways pulling two more tankers from its pools.
Only last week, International Seaways confirmed it had withdrawn a trio of aframaxes from Heidmar’s Sigma tanker pool.
The trio went to Concord Maritime of Connecticut, led by former Heidmar chief executive Ben Ognibene.
This time, International Seaways has withdrawn suezmaxes, with the 158,000-dwt sisterships Seaways Hatteras and Seaways Montauk (both built 2017) being placed with Penfield Marine of Connecticut.
Penfield, which is also run by a former Heidmar chief executive, Tim Brennan, confirmed it had agreed to take in the duo.
The expected delivery of the suezmax sisterships to Penfield this week will mark the launch of the group’s suezmax pool, after it established fleets in panamaxes and aframaxes.
The vessel defections come in the wake of Heidmar-Signal’s joint announcement on 6 January that Signal — experts in artificial intelligence — would take on management of the Heidmar pools.
Blindsided
Some Heidmar pool members were said to be blindsided by the changes and began considering alternatives to Heidmar, which is scheduled to shut up shop by 30 June.
In an interview on Monday, Brennan welcomed the chance to work with International Seaways, a New York-listed owner headed by chief executive Lois Zabrocky.
“We couldn’t ask for a better scenario as we’re starting our suezmax pool than to take in two modern, fuel-efficient ships from a top-tier owner we’ve known for many years in International Seaways,” Brennan said.
Penfield had tipped its plans to launch a suezmax pool in an interview with TradeWinds last September and, for the moment, International Seaways is the only member.
“Penfield have a great team and platform to really earn a premium [time-charter equivalent rate] on our suezmaxes,” Zabrocky told TradeWinds.
Despite the Heidmar-Signal defections in the past two weeks, the Greek company’s chief executive continued to stress positive points of the transition.
"We are delighted to be working with our new pool partners who decided to give Signal a try and fully respect those who made a different choice,” Signal CEO Panos Dimitracopoulos said in an email.
Flexible structure
“Our pool structure is by design highly flexible for any partner to easily join as well as exit. The large majority has decided to move from Heidmar to Signal and we will do our best to deliver as expected.
"Our focus remains to keep delivering the highest global commercial performance to our aframax pool partners and to continue improving our capabilities."
For Penfield, an exclusive focus on the carriage of crude and dirty products cargoes leads Brennan to see the budding suezmax pool as complementary to its aframax and panamax business.
“It will provide synergies with those pools,” Brennan said. “Our goal is to grow slowly with owners we know, and who will add value to the pool.”
Penfield has had some additions in those sectors as well. One of them is yet another aframax defection from the Heidmar Sigma pool.
Further defection
Hong Kong’s Nan Fung Shipping is pulling the 114,800-dwt Hong Kong Dawn (built 2009) out of Sigma and delivering it to Penfield next month.
The owner will also add the 111,400-dwt Shanghai Dawn (built 2009) to the Penfield pool in March.
Nan Fung is an existing member with the 114,800-dwt China Dawn (built 2009).
Penfield has also taken in the 115,100-dwt Berica (built 2008) from Bergshav of Norway, which delivered the unit in December.
“Many of us here have worked with Bergshav since the 1990s and we’re really pleased to have them as a partner,” Brennan said.
Associated Maritime, a division of China Merchants Energy Shipping, has placed the 105,500-dwt New Advance (built 2007) in the aframax pool.
Penfield’s aframax fleet now totals 20 units from 12 partners, while it has 31 ships from 12 partners in the panamax pool.
