UK shipping fund Tufton Oceanic Assets continues to profit from a red-hot container ship market with more vessel sales.
The London-listed operation said it has offloaded two ships for a total of $21m.
The internal rate of return will be about 74% and the return on invested capital will be 1.8 times, the company said.
The vessels were acquired in January 2021 for $13.75m in total.
Broker lists suggest the ships are the 2,490-teu sub-panamax pair ER Elena (renamed Elizabeth, built 2003) and ER Camilla (renamed Cindy, built 2004), which cost $6.75m and $7m respectively, with charters attached.
The seller last year was Zeaborn in Germany.
Tufton has sold four other container ships in the past year as prices have soared, while nine vessels of all types have been offloaded in total since the company’s inception in 2018.
The latest deal leaves it with four container ships in a mixed fleet of 20 vessels.
Tufton has reiterated its strategy is to hold assets in the long term, but it will sell if it can generate additional value for shareholders.
The divestments demonstrate a commitment to capital reallocation, it added, and managers continue to identify a pipeline of attractive opportunities to acquire ships across its core sectors, particularly in the chemical and product tanker arenas, and dry cargo.
In January, the 2,546-teu feeder boxship Hammonia Palatium (built 2006) was sold for $19.35m, producing an internal rate of return of 23%. It was bought in March 2018 for $11m.
