Jinhui Shipping & Transportation has taken its spending on supramax bulkers to over $110m with deals to acquire two more vessels.
It has acquired the South Korean owned 56,361-dwt Pacific Bless and 56,469-dwt Pacific Crown (both built 2012), according to a regulatory filing.
The Hong Kong and Oslo-listed supramax specialist said it paid $17.25m for each of the Dolphin 57 design vessels or $34.5m in total.
Jinhui said the latest vessels, which are geared and were built at Jiangsu New Hantong, are due to be delivered between February and March 2022.
The company said it planned to fund 50% of the latest acquisitions with bank financing with the remaining funded from internal sources.
The shipowner has now purchased a total of eight supramaxes from the secondhand market this year in one of its most active acquisition drives in recent years.
This is in stark contrast to 2020, when the company said it was holding back on fleet renewal due to a lack of clarity over fast-moving decarbonisation regulation.
The company said the remarkable rebound in the dry bulk market had prompted the management to review the group's fleet and consider acquiring additional vessels.
Jinhui has a fleet of 24 bulkers comprised of two post-panamaxes and 22 grabs-fitted supramaxes with a total deadweight of 1.5m tons.
Red-hot bulker markets and its aggressive vessel acquisition strategy recently helped Jinhui post a set of stellar third-quarter results.
In mid-November 2021, the company reported a net profit of $19.3m — more than 22 times the profit achieved 12 months earlier.
Supramaxes have been the third most popular class of bulker in the secondhand market so far this year, according to Allied Shipbroking.
An estimated 237 supramaxes, with an average age of 12 years, have changed hands so far this year in deals worth in excess of $3bn.
The top selling bulker segment has been panamaxes with 279 vessels worth $5.2bn sold, followed by handysize vessels with 238 ships worth $2.9bn traded, figures from the Greek shipbroker show.
