Newly launched bulker operator and pool manager Bluepool Trading was the brainchild of its founding partners, but is backed by a number of European shipowners and private individuals.
Bluepool is the first Athens-based company to combine a spot-focused pool with an operator unit, which takes ships on period contracts.
The firm will focus on the panamax market and is led by experienced brokers and traders Aris Bachos, Nikolas Gavriilidis and Kimon Angelopoulos.
Bluepool is open to expanding beyond panamaxes in the longer term, according to Angelopoulos, the company's head of business development.
However, for now, the company wants to establish itself within its chosen niche. Existing panamax pools are few, comprising one managed by C Transport Maritime and another by Klaveness-Marubeni.
Six different shipowners from Greece and Monaco account for about 80% of Bluepool's investor base. Angelopoulos would not identify them but called them "well-established companies and very good names in the market".
The remaining 20% of Bluepool's investors are unnamed private individuals.
"We're very well capitalised to take in, at the current market levels, five period panamax ships and to charter them in and take relevant hedges with FFAs," Angelopoulos told TradeWinds.
Aris Bachos
Role at Bluepool: Managing partner.
Experienced in: Trading and panamax chartering.
Previous job: Noble Group's head of freight trading for panamaxes.
Kimon Angelopoulos
Role at Bluepool: Head of business development.
Experienced in: Shipbroking.
Previous job: Partner at Ifchor.
Nikolas Gavriilidis
Role at Bluepool: Head of derivatives.
Experienced in: Derivatives trading and risk management.
Previous job: Business development for M2M Shipping.
"We're going to keep fundraising in order to grow our business from day one."
Genesis
The three have known each other for a long time. All are Greeks who have spent time working abroad for well-known companies, but have returned to Athens to start this new venture.
Bachos and Gavriilidis told TradeWinds that they had always dreamed of starting a business together.
Once they had settled on a firm idea, they brought in Angelopoulos, who had worked with Bachos at Clarksons around 10 years ago.
"We all build our reputation on a different segment of what we do in the panamax market," Bachos told TradeWinds.
"We're combining our strengths and came up with Bluepool, combining everything."
Differentiator
Bluepool wants to offer shipowners greater flexibility to add or remove vessels from its pool, or to switch from spot exposure to period coverage, Gavriilidis told TradeWinds.
"Some other pools did give you this option in the past, either through the FFA curve, which is not necessarily the most fair benchmark to lock in your period [charter earnings], or you would have to get the vessel back to the Pacific, let's say," he said.
But repositioning vessels can take many weeks, during which time owners may miss commercial opportunities.
"We are way more flexible, way more open," he said. "And we can price all the positions and give the owners the flexibility to give their vessels to period [business] from anywhere."
Shipowners usually favour pooling arrangements during low markets.
Gavriilidis, who runs the paper side of Bluepool's business, said the firm will leverage FFAs to hedge risk and enable owners to lock in their exposure against the Baltic Panamax Index. This way, shipowners will not lose out if they fix a vessel out on time-charter in a rising market.
"We're basically using FFAs as a tool to outperform the index when trading our vessels, but without taking any speculative positions," he said.
Kimon Angelopoulos said of the panamax market: "It's certainly more exciting than what it used to be. It's definitely getting more fun to watch and better for us that we're joining now,"
"Personally, I'm quite bullish because, very simply said, the demand is there. The demand will only grow and the [vessel] supply hasn't been heavily affected."
Gavriilidis is optimistic too, but said the firm will keep a level head with its trading strategy.
"The [panamax] orderbook being not constrained but not really growing, and all going well with Chinese demand, we're quite bullish in the in the market," he said.
"But at the end of the day, we take a more agnostic view of the market. From a trading perspective, we're not taking positions either long or short.
"In order to profit, we're trying to squeeze out trading margins from our physical and paper positions."
