SwissChemGas, the LPG trading affiliate of Athens bulker player SwissMarine Inc, is making its most high-profile market move in years.
According to brokers in Athens and London, the company is in the process of becoming a shipowner with the acquisition of its first ship — a six-year-old VLGC it will take delivery of in about seven months from now.
The vessel in question is the 82,500-cbm Gas Tigers (built 2016), a ship currently owned by KSS Line and said to be changing hands for about $63m.
KSS is believed to be divesting the ship as part of a fleet renewal. The owner of 14 VLGCs has taken delivery of six such newbuildings from Hyundai Heavy Industries since 2021.
On top of that, it has another pair of 86,000-cbm ships under construction at Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co.
Their delivery next year will broadly coincide with the sale of the Gas Tigers, which SwissChemGas has agreed to buy based on its forward delivery in May 2023.
Neither SwissChemGas nor KSS Line responded to a request for comment.
Covering trading needs
The Greek company has a long history in the gas business.
It was established as SwissGas in 1997 by Dimitris Theodorakis, who studied engineering in Switzerland and made his first career moves there.
SwissGas has been an affiliate of Theodorakis’ bulker outfit SwissMarine Inc, a company unrelated to SwissMarine of Geneva.
According to its website, SwissGas began business with a long-term contract to transport LNG from Algeria to Greece. Two years later, the company obtained its first LPG contracts in the Mediterranean and started trading with small gas carriers.
A big breakthrough followed in 2002, when SwissGas was rebranded as SwissChemGas and acquired ContiChem — the LPG trading arm of Continental Grain or ContiGroup, which accounted for 12% of world LPG trade at the time.
Three years later, however, SwissChemGas took a “strategic decision to scale down its activities in LPG trading”.
It made a comeback in 2016, resuming operations in the fully refrigerated LPG market.
The company has re-established itself as an LPG trader since.
According to sources familiar with SwissChemGas, the company currently employs three VLGCs on a one-year time charter basis and another two to three such vessels in the spot market each month.
Its decision to buy its own tonnage now reflects the company’s expanding transport needs amid a market in which freight rates are climbing. According to the sources, SwissChemGas may well be on the lookout to buy more ships.
Evalend in resale deal?
This move is a sign of its bullishness in the prospects of the market.
According to Clarksons, time charter equivalent earnings for a modern 84,000-cbm vessel stood at $64,154 per day in the week to 14 October, almost twice as high as average earnings last year.
This, and rising values for LPG carriers, have probably encouraged Greek player Evalend Shipping to make a quick profit by flipping one of the several newbuildings it has under construction.
Greek brokers report that the Kriton Lendoudis-led outfit has sold the 39,200-cbm Mangusta (built 2022) for $59.5m.
That would represent a nifty capital gain for Lendoudis, who is believed to have ordered the ship at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard in late 2020 at a much lower price of $45.7m.
According to VesselsValue, the Mangusta will be put upon delivery on a long-time charter with Trafigura.
The S&P Global Market Intelligence data platform already features the ship under its new name Green Energy. A Singapore-based entity called Purus Marine ShipCo 1 is listed as its new registered owner.
The name suggests the involvement of Julian Proctor-led Purus Marine, a company that is majority-owned by a government shareholder and long-term institutional investors.
Officials at London- and Singapore-based Purus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Purus is not currently listed with any LPG ships.
The company, however, acknowledges on its website that it is planning to expand into the “transport of additional lower-carbon fuels such as LPG and hydrogen, as well as the transport of CO2 for storage and sequestration or end-market use”.
Purus has already made some high-profile shipping investments. Earlier this year, it teamed up with Celsius Tankers to order two LNG carrier newbuildings at Samsung Heavy Industries for delivery in 2024. In a separate move, it snapped up the HST Marine wind farm fleet.
This article was amended after original publication to remove a description of Purus Marine as the maritime holding company of US fund EnTrust Global
