Singapore-based and Chinese-backed Winning Shipping has shed one of its older capesize bulkers by selling the 2001-built Sunny Voyager to cash buyers for onward sale to a recycling facility in Chattogram.
The 171,500-dwt Sunny Voyager is one of three vessels that brokers have reported as being sold to Bangladeshi ship recyclers over the past week as their peers in India and Pakistan sat on the sidelines and held off buying.
Winning’s decision to scrap the Sunny Voyager at $610 per ldt, or $13.8m in total, comes less than a month after it tied up a deal to buy the 180,000-dwt bulk carrier Ocean Caesar (built 2008) from Japan’s Kitaura Kaiun for around $20m.
The other two ships reported over the past week as sold to cash buyers for onward sale to Bangladesh were World Tankers Management’s 47,200-dwt MR2 product tanker Salamis (built 1998), sold at $660 per ldt, or $6.1m, and Vasi Shipping’s 1,728-teu container ship Vasi Star (built 1996), which was sold for $675 per ldt, or $5.2m.
No deals were reported for recycling facilities in India or Pakistan, where price offerings remained stable at well below the $600-per-ldt mark.
Cash buyer Best Oasis said that the Indian ship recycling market dropped toward the end of last week due to market pessimism in light of the gloomy global outlook.
Ship recyclers at Alang have also lost out on a Vietnamese LPG carrier that was sold for dismantling there at the end of February.
Market sources say that Petrovietnam’s reported deal to sell the 74,332-cbm gas carrier Viet Dragon 68 (built 1982) for $600 per ldt did not go through, and the Vietnamese oil company is investigating potential sales for further trading.
Commenting on the higher prices coming out of Bangladesh, which is still suffering from issues over letters of credit, Singapore-based Star Asia Shipbroking said there was speculation in the market that it was a result of cash buyers competing to secure tonnage in anticipation of rising demand.
“A vast majority of the ship recyclers don’t believe these prices paid by the cash buyers support the actual market conditions, despite a sharp increase in the domestic ship scrap prices amid delays in issuing letters of credit for imported scrap,” said Star Asia director Rohit Goyanka.
Best Oasis said that buyers in Bangladesh are “highly keen to get tonnage” as there is a potential window for the opening of letters of credit. While this window has yet to open, Best Oasis said the Bangladesh Central Bank has slightly lifted the purchase price of the vessels from its prior lows, providing purchasers with some respite.
