Cosco Shipping Specialised Carriers has consolidated its leading position in the ultramax tweendecker segment with the purchase of four vessels from Singapore’s IMC Shipping.
The ships are the 64,800-dwt Maritime Challenger and Maritime Sonia, 64,900-dwt Maritime Sinchai (all built 2017) and 65,000-dwt Maritime Voyager (built 2016). IMC originally ordered them from Oshima Shipbuilding in 2014 at a reported price of $36m each.
The four IMC ships will give the Cosco special-tonnage unit a majority of the world’s ultramax multipurpose (MPP) vessels, counting a series of newbuildings that are to be delivered this year and next.
A source close to the deal told TradeWinds the ships are going for around the same price at which they were ordered. That is lower than the price estimate given by VesselsValue, which puts them at an average of $40.26m each.
The quartet is to be delivered over the next two months, according to the source.
An official of Cosco Shipping Specialised Carriers could not immediately be reached for comment. An IMC official declined to comment.
The sales come during a shift of strategy on the dry bulk side of the Tsao family-controlled private company, which is refocusing on asset-light operations.
TradeWinds has reported on IMC Shipping managing director Frederik Guttormsen’s hires of dry bulk industry veterans Michael Holm and Keith Denholm and ship manager Liu Mingfa over the past eight months.
Guangzhou-based Cosco Shipping Specialised Carriers — formerly known as Cosco Ltd or Coscol — is the “everything else” division of the Chinese state-owned enterprise, with a fleet including tonnage types from small handysize loggers and asphalt tankers to large semi-submersible heavylift vessels and car carriers.
But its main emphasis has traditionally been its MPPs. It brands many of the largest of these as “pulp carriers” and uses them in a triangular Europe-South America-Far East trading pattern that it has developed to allow a minimum of ballasting.
IMC’s trading of its four ultra MPPs has been more opportunistic. They were built to combine project cargo and commodities, and not long ago they were carrying heavy goods such as windmill components to West Africa and returning to the Far East with manganese ore.
But lately they have served as surrogate container carriers in the transpacific trade, said a source. The ships have a 494-teu container capacity and have been sailing entirely laden with boxes from China to the US west coast, returning from western Canada with agricultural cargoes.
The world fleet of ultra MPPs of more than 60,000 dwt numbers only 40, counting newbuildings on order. Before this transaction, 20 of those were already controlled by Cosco.
Four each are currently controlled by IMC, China Merchants Group’s Ming Wah division and Chinese-Polish joint venture Chipolbrok.
The largest ships of the type are controlled by Norway’s Gearbulk and the G2 Pool it runs with Grieg Star Shipping. They operate a fleet of eight Japanese-built and partly Japanese-owned MPPs of 73,000 dwt.
