Maersk Tankers has agreed to commercially manage four product tankers owned by Xihe Holdings, one of troubled Singaporean tycoon Lim Onn Kuin’s shipping vehicles.
The Danish pool operator said on Thursday that the deal is in line with its strategy of building scale through partnerships driven by the use of digitalisation to reduce carbon emissions and boost earnings.
“We will increase the tradability of the vessels and harness our commercial and digital expertise to boost their performance, providing attractive financial returns to them and our existing pool partners,” chief investment officer Claus Gronborg said in a company statement.
Maersk Tankers has taken delivery of the 50,400-dwt Ocean Mercury (built 2008) while the 9,500-dwt Ocean Eagle (built 2010), 50,200-dwt Zhu Jiang (built 2009) and 50,300-DWT Ocean Globe (built 2007) will join its pools later.
The company is one of the world’s largest pool operators, with over 220 vessels under its commercial management. Its MR pool currently has 98 ships after more than doubling its size over the past year.
Xihe Holdings is part of the Xihe Group, which also includes Xihe Capital and Lim’s 11 special purpose vehicles.
The group previously owned 136 vessels under commercial management by Ocean Tankers, the shipping arm of oil trader Hin Leong, also founded by Lim.
Earlier this year, Hin Leong filed for court protection due to heavy losses amid the collapse in oil prices, and Ocean Tankers was not able to maintain its operations.
As part of the group-wide restructuring, in August Xihe Group appointed V.Group as the technical and commercial manager for 16 of its vessels.
Those included the 108,953-dwt product tanker Ocean Queen (built 2008) and 15 unnamed ships.
Separately, Hin Leong, Ocean Tankers and Xihe Group have all been placed under judicial management, and lenders have begun the fire sales of their assets.
VesselsValue data shows Xihe Group has sold a total of 14 tankers since September, including five VLCCs, three LR2s and two MRs.
TradeWinds recently reported that KPMG put a handysize chemical tanker, two MR tankers and three 13,500-dwt chemical tankers belonging to Xihe Group on the sales block.
Standard Chartered Bank, one of Hin Leong’s lenders, appointed KPMG as their receiver.
