The Nicholas G Moundreas Group is set to divest an 18-year-old VLCC, as part of a sales drive that saw the Greek player offload several vintage tankers, broking sources in Piraeus said.
Talks to sell the 319,000-dwt Perfect (built 2003) come amid unabated buying interest, mostly from Asia, for ageing crude and product carriers. Greeks have sold dozens of crude tankers to Eastern interests in recent months.
The Moundreas group has been at the forefront of that trend. TradeWinds has reported that group tanker arm NGM Energy sold the 105,500-dwt LR2 product tanker Amalfi (built 2003) in January. It has since been renamed Lidinia.
It also sold the 309,200-dwt Voyager I (built 2003), now renamed Phoenix X, in October.
The company has followed up with another three deals, which have largely escaped brokers’ attention.
The trio comprises the 299,000-dwt VLCC Commodore (renamed Kin A, built 2000), the 70,400-dwt panamax Promoter (renamed Oreo, built 2002) and the 159,900-dwt suezmax Lion King (renamed Akin I, built 2000).
No pricing details have emerged on any of these deals.
However, Moundreas, known for its skill in playing the secondhand market, homed in on hundreds of deals over the family’s decades-long track record in the industry.
Recent buys
Moundreas aims to eventually replace the outgoing vessels with younger tonnage, market sources said. The group has already made moves in that direction, as TradeWinds reported recently.
In December 2020, NGM Energy bought an aframax from Pleiades Shipping Agents. The 105,300-dwt Pamisos (built 2011) has been renamed Baroness.
In February this year, the company spent an estimated $50m on a pair of 10-year-old suezmax sisterships sold by lenders of Greek peer Stamatis Molaris.
True to its asset playing habits, Moundreas immediately flipped one of them. The 158,600-dwt Suez Fuzeyya (built 2011) emerged on 25 March in the fleet of Ridgebury Tankers under the new name Ridgebury Elizabeth B.
At the same time, Moundreas made bold moves to expand its dry bulk operation. The group acquired six capesizes between July 2020 and January 2021, before prices skyrocketed in a buying frenzy.
Moundreas’ tanker sales would not have been possible without the insatiable appetite for vintage tankers in Asia. Online shipping databanks, such as Equasis, show most oil carriers sold by Moundreas as being managed by entities based in that continent.
The same pattern applies to more than 20 shipping companies in Athens and Piraeus, which have offloaded nearly 60 ageing oil carriers since May last year, when tanker markets started sagging, according to TradeWinds data.
The ships Greeks sold were built between 2000 and 2005 and range from MRs to VLCCs. Most of the buyers were based in China, Vietnam and the Middle East, although some were from Russia.
Other than Moundreas, the busiest Greek seller has been John and Maria Angelicoussis-led Maran Tankers, which has offloaded about six VLCCs since November, built between 1999 and 2001.
Maran has replaced outgoing tonnage by buying younger VLCCs on the secondhand market as well as by taking delivery of suezmax newbuildings from South Korean yards.
