Turkish bulker company Aruna Shipping has made its first move in the secondhand market since setting up shop in Istanbul a dozen years ago.

The low-profile outfit has agreed to spend $45m en bloc on a pair of supramax sisterships offered for sale by Greece’s Atlantic Bulk Carriers, ship-management sources said.

The vessels in question are the 57,400-dwt Desert Hope and Desert Peace (both built 2011), which were both built at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD).

HMD is also where Aruna made its shipping debut in 2011 with an order for three supramax newbuildings.

The 55,500-dwt Aruna Hulya and Aruna Ece (both built 2012), and 55,500-dwt Aruna Ismail (built 2013) are still trading in the company’s fleet and had remained its only ship investment before now.

Special order

Aruna’s decision to make its next expansion move 12 years later highlights the bullish sentiment in dry bulk shipping circles (see graph below).

“The secondhand market continues upping the ante and is firing on all cylinders,” Doric Shipbrokers said in a report on 29 April.

The Baltic Dry Index clocked up its fourth consecutive weekly advance on that day, standing 115% above its 10-year average for this time of year, brokers at Athens-based WeberSeas noted.

Aruna is led by shipowner Ismail Bekmezci and his sons, Cihan and Cengiz. Aruna is a separate enterprise from Beks Shipmanagement, a company led by another member of the Bekmezci family, which has made a fortune in the textile trade.

Athens-based Atlantic Bulk, which ordered them as newbuildings and has traded them continuously since, is known to like ships with enhanced specifications, such as higher steel content and stronger engines.

Atlantic Bulk has stuck to such features in an ultramax newbuilding programme that was completed earlier this year with the delivery of the 61,000-dwt Desert Pioneer and Desert Seeker (both built 2022) from Hyundai Vietnam.

The sale of the Desert Hope and Desert Peace is, therefore, understood to form part of a gradual fleet-renewal programme that keeps Atlantic Bulk’s fleet size to about 20 ultramaxes and supramaxes.

Costamare joins sellers?

Bullish market sentiment that underpins rising ship prices is highlighted by another notable supramax deal reported by several brokers in Athens and London.

US-listed Costamare is said to be selling the 57,300-dwt Thunder (built 2009) to Chinese interests for about $18.3m.

If confirmed, that would be the first bulker sold by the Greek company since it entered that arena with a splash in 2021, when it built from scratch a fleet of 44 bulkers with serial acquisitions on the secondhand market worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Costamare managers declined to comment on the information that they are selling the Thunder. The company is scheduled to release financial results and provide a corporate update on 5 May.

In its previous earnings earlier this year, Costamare said secondhand bulkers were too costly to engage in further acquisitions. A sale of the Thunder would make a lot of sense as an asset play as the company bought the ship in July 2021 for just $14.2m.