Greece's Brave Maritime is emerging with yet another tanker purchase that pushes its total expansion bill for 2021 towards the $400m mark.
Ship-management sources in Athens identify the private shipping arm of the Vafias family as the player behind the recent acquisition of the 50,300-dwt Ocean Cosmos (built 2008).
TradeWinds reported in late November that the South Korean-built MR2 tanker fetched $10.7m in a tender sale organised by the joint liquidators of the former fleet of the Xihe Group.
The slightly older sistership Ocean Globe was reported sold as well at the time but its buyers have not emerged yet.
The Ocean Cosmos will trade henceforth as Clean Nirvana. Its previous operator, Ocean Tankers, frequently touted the ship as having been designed from a trader's perspective with high-capacity pumps and superior tank coatings.
The Ocean Cosmos is the second ship in quick succession that Brave buys in the Xihe wind-down. The first came in September, when the company swooped on the 50,300-dwt Clean Imperial (ex-Ocean Mars, built 2009), as TradeWinds reported.
Greek buyers such as Brave Maritime have swallowed a considerable chunk of the failed Xihe fleet. TradeWinds data show Hellenic players acquiring 18 of the 52 tankers between MR and VLCC size that Xihe liquidators have divested since the summer of 2020.
The other Greek companies to have feasted most on Xihe's carcass with two or three purchases each are Maran Tankers, Oceangold Tankers, Spring Marine and Aeolos Shipmanagement (see table).
Confident in tankers
A third MR2 acquired by Brave recently — the 46,000-dwt Clean Justice (ex-Justice Express, built 2011) — highlights the confidence the Vafias family has in the prospects of the products tanker market.
That confidence is also reflected in the clan's parallel moves at publicly-traded company StealthGas, which decided in November against offloading its four product tankers in a weak market.
StealthGas, which specialises in LPG carriers, opted instead to spin off these non-core vessels into a separate, new outfit called Imperial Petroleum, which launched on the Nasdaq in early December.
Not that the family has been quiet in LPG carriers. Between February and July, Brave ordered five such midsize newbuildings at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard.
During the same period, the company focused on bulkers as well, buying up five handysizes on the secondhand market. Its acquisitions came early enough in the cycle for Brave to benefit from the rapid value appreciation the dry bulk sector has enjoyed in 2021.
