Cape Shipping, an owner of bulkers and container ships, is taking steps to enter the tanker market.
Shipbuilding sources and brokers say that the low-profile company has signed a letter of intent with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS) for a pair of LR2 tankers.
The Chinese yard would deliver the vessels in 2026 at a cost of about $66m each.
If a contract is eventually finalised, SWS would build the LR2s at Jiangsu Hantong Wing Heavy Industry — a yard that belongs to Jiangsu Hantong Group, but part of which SWS has rented.
Managers at Andrianopoulos family-controlled Cape Shipping did not respond to a request for comment.
The company’s current fleet consists of five bulkers and 11 container ships and a confirmation of the SWS order would mark a return to tankers after decades.
Cape Shipping says on its website that it has managed VLCCs before.
It is not clear when exactly this happened and with how many ships. What is certain, however, that Cape Shipping has not had any tankers over the past 12 years and it is very likely that it has not done so at all this century.
Versatile, asset-playing past
The company had experience with many different types of ships before and has not shied away from expanding into new portfolios through newbuildings.
According to its website, the core of Cape’s historical fleet consisted of old, 15,000-dwt tweendeckers, the last of which was sold in 2011.
By that time, the company had already embarked on a newbuilding programme to renew its fleet with panamax, kamsarmax and capesize bulkers.
In 2014, it started ordering newbuildings again — this time to expand into container ships.
All the boxships it ordered are still trading in Cape’s fleet — except one post-panamax it sold in 2021 for an eye-watering price above $130m to take advantage of soaring boxship values.
Some of the profits generated from that record-beating sale went into an acquisition spree for large, secondhand bulkers.
Cape Shipping bought two capesizes and one newcastlemax over the past 12 months, for more than $60m in total.
In January 2023, the company emerged as the new owner of China Steel Corp’s 203,500-dwt China Steel Team (renamed Cape Kensington, built 2006).
In May, a pair of capesize sisterships sold by John Fredriksen’s Golden Ocean followed: the 169,200-dwt Golden Shui and Golden Feng (both built 2009). They are currently trading as Cape Pylos and Cape Astra respectively.
Cape Shipping’s history stretches back to the 19th century, when the principals’ ancestors were ship masters and owners on the Aegean island of Kasos.
In 1960, they set up Tropis Shipping as their shipbrokers in London. Activities were centralised in Athens when Cape Shipping was founded in the Greek capital in 1987.
