Diamantis Lemos Shipping has sold a 2003-built product tanker pair to cash buyers for eventual demolition, slashing its oil carrier fleet in half.
Athens-based brokers report this week the company has shed the 72,300-dwt tanker Georgis Nikolos (built 2003) at an undisclosed price.
This comes barely a month after information it sold another Hudong Zhonghua-built sistership, the 72,300-dwt Kyriakoula (built 2003).
VesselsValue estimates the pair’s demolition value at just below $12m in total.
Ship trackers and online shipping directories suggest the tankers are indeed headed for the scrapyard.
Back in August 2017, Diamantis Lemos put both the Kyriakoula and the Georgis Nikolos in Penfield’s panamax tanker pool.
However, the pair no longer features in the fleet list on Penfield’s website. Instead, vessel trackers show them at anchor at Trincomalee, Sri Lanka.
They have been put under the Palau flag and renamed S Kyriakoula and S Georgis. Their new operating company is Prayati Shipping, a Mumbai-based shipmanagement that specialises in final voyage deliveries.
The pair are the youngest panamax tankers to be sold for demolition after the 70,400-dwt DS Progress (built 2003), which Germany’s DS Tankers shold in August at $440 per ldt.
It will be interesting to see whether cash buyers can achieve a similar price, given the jitters caused in the demolition market last week due to political and financial wobbles in India.
“The recycling market has subsequently weakened, with very little demand for new tonnage,” Clarksons said in its latest weekly report.
“Cash buyers are also facing some stubbornness from the recycling yards, as they try to offload a large volume of previously acquired tonnage.”
Other brokers, however, see a silver lining elsewhere on the Indian subcontinent.
“The market in Pakistan seems to be slowly but steadily finding a more stable footing, which could offer some support to prices in the following days,” Athens-based Intermodal said.
Product tanker scrapping has risen to the highest level since 2012, Scorpio said last week.
London-based Diamantis Lemos is represented in Piraeus through affiliate Diamlemos. The tanker sales leave its fleet with six vessels: four panamax bulkers and two panamax tankers – all built at Hudong Zhonghua.
The fleet has been shrinking. In October, Diamlemos saw its then second-oldest vessel, the 74,800-dwt bulker Angelic Grace (built 2001) auctioned in Piraeus at the minimum reserve price of $5.5m.
As TradeWinds reported at the time, the buyers were represented by a hitherto unknown entity called Nerites.
The ship has since emerged with a new name, Fortune Trader, under the management of Greece’s Seadar Shipmanagement.
