Indonesia’s Samudera Shipping Line is spending $12.6m on a pair of ethylene gas carriers.
The company said the Bahama-flagged vessels were built in 2010 and 2009.
Samudera did not disclose any other details about the ships, other than to say that they would be renamed Sinar Ternate and Sinar Tidore upon delivery.
The company’s chief executive officer Bani Maulana Mulia believes the purchase will enable Samudera to expand its fleet and clinch more charter contracts.
“The group will be able to enter into the growing ethylene market in Indonesia, which is mainly used as a feedstock of various petrochemical plants in Indonesia and globally,” the company said.
Samudera expects to finance the acquisition through a combination of internal resources and bank borrowing.
The purchases come at a time when the company expects to see declining earnings from its mainstream liner operation.
In a profit warning at the end of October, Samudera said that revenue and earnings contracted in the third quarter of the year.
That was primarily due to a decline in general market demand, which resulted in lower container volumes and freight rates.
Net profit for the first six months of 2023 dropped by 61% year-on-year to $66.2m.
This was mostly due to a revenue drop in the container shipping segment, which dragged group earnings down by 35% to $305m.
Average freight rates fell sharply and container volume dropped by 50,000 teu to 907,000 teu.
Prior to acquiring gas carriers, Samudera had been renewing its container fleet by taking delivery earlier this year of the 1,500-teu Sinar Bajo and Sinar Bukittinggi (both built 2023).
These are two sister vessels the company purchased in June from Greece’s Cosmoship Management for $59.9m in total.
Another pair of 1,900-teu container vessel newbuildings are due to join the Samudera fleet in the third quarter of 2024 and the first half of 2025 respectively.
The two feedermaxes are under construction at Naikai Shipbuilding in Japan and Samudera purchased them in January 2023 for $66m in total.
Samudera owns and operates about a dozen boxships, all below 2,000 teu.
