BW Dry Cargo will see the results on Friday of an effort to sell a 10-year-old supramax.
The BW Group subsidiary is seeking bids for the 58,000-dwt BW Flax (built 2010), which was built at Tsuneishi Heavy Industries (Cebu) in the Philippines.
Christian Bonfils, chief executive of the Copenhagen-based company, confirmed that the BW Flax is in the market and that the deadline for offers Friday.
The ship is presently in Casablanca, Morocco, to load for discharge in the US Gulf.
He said there said "surprisingly many" potential buyers have inspected the vessel.
The sale and purchase market for dry cargo ships is described as nervous, given the freight rates.
BW Dry Cargo bought the BW Flax in October 2016, when it was the Pearl Halo, for $12m. Valuation platform VesselsValue estimates the ship is now is worth slightly less than $10m, while rival Maritime Strategies International puts the price tag at $11m.
The sale effort comes only one month after another BW Dry Cargo sale effort failed to result in a finalised transaction.
The 83,000-dwt bulker BW Barley (built 2010) had been tied up to a Scandinavian buyer for $15,5m, in a deal that included a two-year charter back to the Singapore-based BW Group at $11,000 per day.
Bonfils said at the time that “the buyers did not perform” on the deal for the ship.
BW Dry Cargo was set up in 2016 as the bulker arm of the BW Group and has conducted a number of asset play deals.
Its fleet ranges from supramaxes to capesizes. The company has 12 vessels that on the water, in addition to four ultramaxes on order at Oshima Shipbulding and two kamsarmaxes at Tsuneishi Cebu. All of the newbuildings are due for delivery this year.
