China Development Bank Financial Leasing (CDB Leasing) has agreed to buy 10 MR product tankers under construction at New Times Shipbuilding.
The Hong Kong-listed leasing arm of state-owned China Development Bank said it will pay New Times nearly $384m for the 50,000-dwt vessels.
CDB Leasing said the ships will be chartered to an unnamed company via an operating lease agreement at floating rates.
“The vessel purchase agreement is entered into by the company during its ordinary and usual course of business,” CDB Leasing said in an exchange filing on Wednesday.
“[The deal] is beneficial to fully leveraging the advantages of the parties and increasing the market share of the company in the vessel market.”
No further details on the transactions were disclosed.
The announcement came after state-owned Shandong Shipping sealed a letter of intent to build 10 MR vessels at New Times for $385m in May.
The ships, which will be built to IMO Tier II emissions standards, are scheduled to be delivered between 2022 and 2024.
It was not immediately known whether CDB Leasing signed for the 10-ship deal for Shandong Shipping.
The lessor has been expanding in the shipping sector after raising $1bn from bond sales earlier this year.
In May, CDB Leasing ordered a series of eight 80,000-dwt bulkers from a Chinese state-owned shipbuilder for $27.7m each.
The eight vessels are being constructed by Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry’s Yangzhou yard.
Earlier this month, CDB Leasing agreed to buy two secondhand supramax, two ultramax and seven handysize bulkers from Clipper Group of Denmark for about $140m.
The ships were the 30,400-dwt Clipper Triumph, 30,500-dwt Clipper Talent and 28,300-dwt Clipper Lis (all built 2009); the 30,400-dwt Clipper Tarpon, 32,700-dwt Clipper Apollonia, 32,700-dwt Clipper Aegina, 32,500-dwt Clipper Alexandria and 58,500-dwt Clipper Brunello (all built 2010); the 58,400-dwt Clipper Barolo (built 2011); and the 63,300-dwt Clipper Kythira and Clipper Kalavryta (both built 2015).
Separately, the lessor has also snapped up six ultramax bulkers from Celsius Shipping for nearly $130m.
Shipping sources said Clipper and Celsius would not be chartering back the bulkers from CDB Leasing.
