Turkey’s Arkas Holding, a powerhouse in the short-haul container ship business in the Mediterranean, has emerged with its first big bulk carrier.
The company’s official fleet list has been updated to include the 53,800-dwt Zeynep C (built 2003). This is the only bulker alongside the 50 feeder container ships and six oil barges that Arkas owns.
The ship’s acquisition took place in mid-May, when it was trading as Nicolaos A in the fleet of Greece’s Blue Planet Shipping.
Blue Planet, a Piraeus-based bulker specialist with a fleet of 14 vessels, was reported by brokers to have sold the Nicolaos A at a price between $14m and $14.4m at the time.
Market sources in Istanbul suspect that Arkas may repurpose the vessel to carry containers. Its current position, however, suggests that the company is using the Chinese-built vessel in the Black Sea trade.
Arkas doesn't seem to have any ambitious expansion plans in the sector. A spokeswoman told TradeWinds by e-mail that the company has decided to limit its bulker exposure to just two ships, “due to the circumstances”.
The Lucien Arkas-led company has been very quiet on the sale-and-purchase front in recent years.
In its latest known move, it purchased its fifth bunker barge to bolster its role as a physical fuel supplier — a market it entered in 2009.
In the meantime, the Arkas group benefitted from a soaring container ship market to fix vessels at lucrative rates. Brokers reported in January that Hapag Lloyd fixed the 2,837-teu Emma A (built 2007) for three years at $40,000 per day.
A little earlier, in October 2021, CMA CGM was said to have fixed the 2,824-teu Stanley A (built 2006) for three years at $37,000 per day.
