South Korea’s HMM is wasting little time in spending its profit to grow its fleet.
It has spent $60.5m on three 19-year-old feeder boxships.
Container ship players said HMM acquired the 2005-built trio from two companies — Regional Container Lines and MPC Container Ships.
Sources said it bought the 2,478-teu AS Paola from tonnage provider MPC Container and acquired the 2,378-teu Wana Bhum and Xutra Bhum from RCL.
The company is said to have paid $20.5m for the AS Paola and $20m each for the other pair.
MPC Container, when approached for comment, said that although it aims to maintain a “precise and transparent communication” with regards to its business, including sale-and-purchase and chartering activity, it has a policy of not commenting on external reports relating to these topics.
“We will, however, update on our S&P as well as chartering activity in the forthcoming half-yearly report scheduled for announcement on 28 August”.
HMM and RCL did not reply to emails seeking comment.
HMM appears to have paid at least 23% more than the market price for the three feeder ships.
VesselsValue shows the current value of the AS Paola to be $15.96m, while the Wana Bhum is estimated at $16.17m and the Xutra at $16.33m.
Fleet growth
HMM is pushing for a big expansion by 2030. It plans to increase its container ship and bulker fleet extensively to strengthen its global competitiveness.
It unveiled a target to increase its container shipping capacity from the current 84 vessels of 920,000 teu to 130 ships of 1.5m teu.
The company said the growth in the boxship fleet will enable it to expand its global service network and shipping routes.
On its bulk shipping business, which includes dry cargo, tankers, car carriers and heavylift vessels, it is looking to swell the number of ships from 36, totalling 6.3m dwt, to 110, totalling 12.28m dwt.
The purchase of the three feeder boxships brings the total number of secondhand vessels that HMM has bought this year to 12, according to VesselsValue.
Its earlier nine ships include one post-panamax — the 6,350-teu Hyundai Tacoma (built 2009), which it bought from KAMCO. It has also invested in one capesize bulker, three handysizes and ultramaxes and panamaxes.
HMM’s net profit in the first half of the year climbed 88% to KRW 1.14trn ($835m). Operating profit rose 125% to KRW 1trn and revenues rose 18.6% to nearly KRW 5trn.
HMM is considered a state-owned company because its main shareholders, Korea Development Bank and Korea Ocean Business Corp, which control 57.9% of HMM, aim to privatise the company.
