Two heavyweight owners have teamed up to nurse a restructuring boxship fleet back to health.
Germany’s NSC Schiffahrt and Greece’s Interunity Management Corp are overseeing the operation of five sub-panamax sisterships with outstanding claims against them.
One of the former German KG (limited partnership)-owned vessels — the 2,872-teu Arica (built 2007) — is to be auctioned off in the US this month after an arrest and court order in Delaware.
Its owner, FS Arica of Liberia, had failed to pay bills to suppliers and bunker providers.
The other ships are the 2,872-teu Algarrobo (built 2009), Andino and Austral (both built 2008) and Andes (built 2007). VesselsValue assesses them as worth $9.15m, $7.94m, $8.21m and $7.03m, respectively.
Ownership switch
Their ownership changed from KGs in 2016. All were then owned by single-ship companies with the FS prefix.
TradeWinds understands this signifies Freedom Shipping, a company that TradeWinds has previously reported as being linked to low-key London-based Norwegian owner Christopher Paus.
His Pausco Agencies is described by Interunity as the former manager.
Neither Freedom Shipping nor Pausco could be contacted, but Interunity said Pausco continued to successfully own and operate boxship tonnage.
The five vessels are now under new ownership, with Interunity as the owner’s agent. Interunity said it could not reveal more details due to contractual confidentiality.
The Greek company described the ships as part of a “restructuring portfolio”.
Its aim now is to generate value within the portfolio, it told TradeWinds.
“The owners are working to settle claims,” it said. “However, the decision as to whether the settlement proposal is acceptable will be up to the creditors to determine.
“Therefore it is ultimately their decision whether the vessels are arrested and sold under judicial sale.”
NSC retained
NSC took over technical management on 2 June.
Interunity added: “The new owners intend to maintain NSC as the vessels’ technical managers. NSC has considerable experience in this space and has proven to be swift in resolving the technical challenges on board the vessels.”
NSC confirmed to TradeWinds that it had taken on the ships, but had no further comment.
Turkish suppliers
Paus has been involved with Norwegian KS (limited partnership) projects since the 1990s, when he invested in elderly VLCCs before turning to containerships.
Interunity has a mixed fleet of 15 tankers, multipurpose ships and a bulker.
The Arica was arrested on 20 May by Turkish suppliers Atlas Uluslararasi Kumanyacilik and Atlas Gemi Vanalari.
FS Arica had ordered supplies including wires, cables and valves from Atlas, US court documents showed.
They were delivered last October and November, but the bills were never paid. The Atlas companies are demanding $100,000.
German bunker supplier Deutsche Calpam has since joined the action after not being paid for 250 tonnes of fuel oil and 175 tonnes of marine gasoil that were delivered in Kingston in April. The bunkers were worth $151,573 in total.
Charterer Network Shipping also then became a plaintiff when FS Arica allegedly breached the contract terms. It is claiming $333,000.
The total owing to all three is more than $580,000. A minimum auction price has been set at 200% of this figure — $1.16m.
