Turkish handysize specialist Devbulk has bought its third bulker in a year and is likely to end its expansion drive as it hits its self-imposed growth limits.
Led by sixth-generation shipowner brothers Hakki and Orhan Deval, Devbulk will soon take delivery of the 38,100-dwt Anne Mette Bulker (built 2012), after which it will trade as Lady Sare.
It was agreed that the Naikai Zosen-built vessel would change hands a couple of weeks ago at around $23m, market sources said. The deal, however, includes a one-year charter back to its previous owner, Lauritzen Bulkers.
Lauritzen and Devbulk have been close business partners. Clarksons was the broker.
The transaction marks somewhat of a turning point for Devbulk, which was founded in 2011, but which looks back on a family shipping history of more than a century.
Sources familiar with the company’s thinking said the latest acquisition is likely to complete an expansion round that began last August, in which it added two handysizes and one supramax.
Ten ships, which executives had stated to be their expansion target last year, is a natural size for the medium-size company.
Devbulk manages all its ships in-house with a staff of nearly 30 employees out of a prime-location wooden villa — known in Turkish as yali — directly on the Bosphorus shore.
“They may sell from the oldest and start renewing the fleet,” one source said. Devbulk owns nine handysizes and one supramax built between 2008 and 2015.
The company was a pure-play handysize player until February this year, when it emerged as the buyer of the Mitsui-built 55,900-dwt supramax WP Ambition (renamed Lady Gulten, built 2015).
Sources said the company originally wanted to buy a handysize at that time, but saw an opportunity amid unusual market circumstances in which supramaxes were priced equally, or even lower, than handysizes.
Devbulk managers do not rule out pouncing on even larger ships in future when renewing their fleet — even capesizes or kamsarmaxes.
“Maybe they’ll keep the same number of ships and upgrade the deadweight. Decreasing the average age of a fleet is a bit like buying a ship,” the source said.
Hakki Deval, 42, is Devbulk’s chief executive. His 39-year-old brother Orhan is chief financial officer. Both attended the Costas Grammenos MSc course in shipping, trade & finance at Bayes Business School, London.
Devbulk is separate from Devmarin and Deval Marine, two firms led by other members of the wider Deval family, which hails from the town of Rize on the Black Sea.
