Belgian owner Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) has inked two more newcastlemax bulker newbuildings at China’s Qingado Beihai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, bringing its order tally there to four.
The vessels are options that the company held at the yard after it ordered two ships there in July.
The order brings CMB’s total spend on newcastlemaxes at Qingdao Beihai to $244m.
Benoit Timmermans, chief commercial officer of CMB’s dry division, Bocimar, confirmed that the options for the two ships had been lifted.
Officials at Qingdao Beihai were not available for comment.
Timmermans has previously described the July order as “opportunistic”.
At the time, he said that the “orderbook for 2022 and 2023 and the fundamentals look good for dry bulk, at least for the next couple of years”.
The four ships are also part of the company's renewal of its dry bulk fleet.
Timmermans said his company has sold a lot of the older units and the fleet had been substantially reduced.
Shipbuilding players said CMB is paying between $60m and $61m each for the vessels.
They will run on conventional marine fuels and will be built to comply with Phase 2 of the International Maritime Organization's Energy Efficiency Design Index and Tier III NOx standards.
Qingdao Beihai is scheduled to deliver the quartet in 2023.
Boxship options
In a separate deal, CMB’s containership division, Delphis, is said to have added two more 6,000-teu newbuildings at state-owned Qingdao Yangfan Shipbuilding, bringing its tally of boxships there to eight.
The ships are said to be optional units.
Delphis managing director Maxime Van Eecke played down the suggestion that the options had already been exercised.
“We are waiting a little bit, we are not obliged to exercise as yet,” he said.
The cost of the boxship newbuildings has not been disclosed but the vessels will feature ice-class 1A notation. Alphaliner data lists them as having a nominal capacity of 5,890 teu, with a 40-metre beam and 1,150 reefer plugs.
The ships are designed to operate with conventional fuels. But Delphis is expected to look at alternative fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, closer to the delivery date.
Qingdao Yangfan would be slated to deliver the octet between end-2022 and September 2024.
Besides being active on newbuildings, CMB has also engaged in the sale-and-purchase market. In July, the company sold two LR2 tankers to banking giant JP Morgan affiliate Global Meridian Holdings for $55m each.
CMB offloaded the two 114,000-dwt aframax product tankers that were built at South Korea’s Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction (HHIC). According to Clarksons’ Shipping Intelligence Network, HHIC is scheduled to deliver the first LR2 — to be named Lion this month — and the second vessel, Leopard, in December.
