Copenhagen-listed Norden made the switch as it adjusted its orderbook in the face of a difficult dry cargo market.

The first of the outgoing vessels is for delivery this year, with the other two set to arrive in 2016 and 2017. The newbuildings, which came at a cheaper price, are for 2018 and 2019 delivery.

Jan Rindbo, chief executive of Norden, told TradeWinds: “What we are doing is pushing out our newbuilding pogramme. Rather than taking early delivery of those ships we have taken them off the book and replaced them with new ships with better designs that are coming a little bit later.

“We are buying ourselves a little bit of time in this dry bulk market.”

He explained the market does not need new orders but the company had the opportunity to adjust its newbuilding portfolio and that proved to be good value for Norden.

Rindbo was unable to disclose details for the ships involved in the reshuffle, other than that they are all at Japanese yards.

“All of our recent dry cargo investments have been focused on Japanese designs,” he said. “That’s where we see we get the best value when you look at quality and price.”

Second quarter success

The orderbook shuffle came to light as Norden reported a strong second quarter performance, underpinned by a record performance from its tanker division.

Operating profit of $36m beat the $27m loss of a year ago and the $17.5m consensus.

 

Forde Morkedal of Clarksons Platou Securities said: “Norden beat 2Q15 estimates due to surprisingly strong dry bulk earnings despite the very weak spot market, a result we would tie to the COA operating model. The product tanker earnings were as expected very strong.”

Dry getting better

Rindbo says the second half should see a better bulker market than the low rates experienced in the opening six months of the year.

“What is happening here is the destocking in China is coming to an end and China is starting to import more iron ore,” Rindbo said of the upturn during the past few weeks.

“That has led to this recovery mainly in the capesize segment. We believe it’s more factors of stock building and maybe seasonality starting to play in, as opposed to a more structural change.

"It’s a little bit early for that but never the less we do expect the market to be a little bit stronger in the second half of the year than in the first half.”