After a hugely successful asset play run with older ships and newbuildings, Leon Patitsas is reinvesting much of his profit in more tankers and large car carriers.
His Athens-based outfit, Atlas Maritime, confirmed on its website that it has declared options to expand its considerable orderbook of such vessels to a total of 12 ships.
The freshly booked newbuildings are a pair of 157,000-dwt conventionally fuelled suezmaxes due to be completed at DH Shipbuilding in December 2025 and January 2026, as well as an additional 7,000-ceu dual-fuel car carrier at CIMC Raffles, scheduled for delivery in July 2026.
No official information exists about the price at which the options were declared.
Market sources believe the price of the suezmaxes is around the same level at which the Greek owner ordered his first ones at the same yard, at about $85m.
The cost of the car carriers, however, is thought to have appreciated to a price in the “high $80m”, compared with the $85m that Atlas’ first units cost.
The latest newbuildings bring Atlas’ orderbook to 12 vessels — four 114,900-dwt LR2s and four 157,000-dwt suezmaxes at DH Shipbuilding, and four 7,000-ceu car carriers at CIMC Raffles.
How to double one’s cash
It is understood to have more options available to potentially boost the orderbook further.
Patitsas is not alone in these projects, having Denmark’s European Maritime Finance as a partner.
Atlas has not yet arranged employment for any of its newbuildings.
Given current market trends, however, Patitsas can expect to charter them at high rates on delivery.
The 115,100-dwt Freeport Star (built 2023), the company’s only ship on the water, is earning $50,000 per day in a one-year charter with BP.
The car carrier market has been moving in Atlas’ favour as well. As TradeWinds reported on 2 October, Gram Car Carriers’ 7,000-ceu Viking Queen (built 2007) was fixed by “a leading European operator”, probably Grimaldi, for five years at a juicy $62,300 per day.
Atlas has generated about $450m in proceeds over the past couple of years in highly lucrative sales of older tankers and aframax newbuildings ordered at the bottom of the market during the Covid pandemic.
It has reinvested much of that money in an extensive, $1.3bn newbuilding programme arranged by Clarksons in which Atlas has ordered 17 vessels, including four aframaxes it flipped to Libya’s GNMTC, as TradeWinds reported.
Atlas managers said the company has doubled its money in these deals, on a cash-on-cash basis.
