Pasha Hawaii has sold a 44-year-old container ship for recycling, demolition sector sources say.
Best Oasis, a cash buyer of ships for recycling, reported on Tuesday that the domestic liner arm of the Pasha Group sold the 2,303-teu Horizon Enterprise (built 1980) on an “as is” basis at $315 per ldt, or $4.3m in total.
This rare sale of a Jones Act-compliant container ship for recycling comes as Pasha Group, which is controlled by the third generation of the Pasha family, throws its weight behind LNG as its preferred fuel choice.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For now, the location at which the Horizon Enterprise will be recycled remains unknown.
However, given that the price it was sold for is well below the $480 and $490 per ldt that recyclers in India and Bangladesh are offering for container ships, it is likely to be heading to a recycling facility in the US or Turkey.
Like most players in the protected Jones Act, Pasha Hawaii’s fleet has until recently been made up of some of the oldest container ships still in operation.
The Horizon Enterprise, together with the 2,437-teu Horizon Spirit (built 1980), were still operating with their original steam turbine machinery until they were laid up in San Diego, California earlier this year.
A third vessel of the same 1980 vintage, the 2,276-teu George II, was converted to run on LNG in 2015.
Pasha Hawaii originally intended to retrofit the Horizon Enterprise and Horizon Spirit with LNG dual-fuel engines but instead replaced them with LNG dual-fuel newbuildings from US shipbuilder Keppel AmFELS.
The first of these 2,525-teu Ohana-class ships, the George III, was delivered in 2022, followed by the Janet Marie in 2023.
The company also operates a vehicle carrier and ro-ro general cargo ship, both of which run on conventional fuel.
Eric Priante Martin contributed to this story
