Greek container ship orders at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD) have been coming in thick and fast.
A few days after US-listed Euroseas announced an $85m order for two 2,800-teu newbuildings at HMD, market sources in Athens and Singapore said that Greek peer Tsakos has pencilled in an even bigger deal for similar ships.
The Tsakos group is ordering four 2,800-teu ships at the South Korean yard, bringing its total orderbook of such vessels there to six.
The conventional but fuel-efficient container ships are scheduled for delivery in 2023 and 2024.
The Euroseas and Tsakos orders are probably part of a batch of newbuilding deals that Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co concluded with four separate companies and revealed in a regulatory filing last week.
Their increased price level of about $42m apiece is characteristic of the container ship boom lately.
The Tsakos group is said to have paid just $37m each for an initial pair of 2,800-teu vessels ordered at the same Ulsan yard in May last year.
The May orders were the major Greek shipowner’s first container ship newbuildings since 2003. Shipping directories are listing them as Hull Nos 4193 and 4194.
Tsakos is known to order newbuildings only after securing employment for them.
New shareholder
Tsakos’ container ship orders were placed on behalf of Tsakos Shipping & Trading, the group’s private arm.
All Tsakos’ boxship exposure has been handled by Tsakos Shipping so far. The company was listed with eight container ships last year. It sold some of them, however, in very lucrative asset sales.
The Tsakos family’s public outfit, Tsakos Energy Navigation (TEN), in contrast, has been limited to investing in tankers and some LNG carriers.
Over the past couple of months, however, TEN has attracted the attention of a major container ship player.
On 20 January, Konstantinos (“Costis”) Konstantakopoulos, the chief executive and majority owner of US-listed Costamare, unveiled in a bourse filing that he controls a 10.5% stake in TEN.
According to TEN stock exchange filings, Konstantakopoulos has assembled that stake gradually since November.
TradeWinds is told that this is a private Konstantakopoulos investment and that his stake in TEN doesn’t concern Costamare at all.
