Clients of an India-based outfit that has assembled a fleet of at least 30 tankers since the Ukraine war began is reported to be making its first selling move in the secondhand market.
Information about a disposal of the 105,000-dwt Marathon (built 2005), a ship in the managed fleet of Gatik Ship Management, is, admittedly, tenuous.
Just a few brokers in London and Athens have so far reported the ice-class aframax as changing hands, at a price between $30m and $32m.
Contacted by TradeWinds, the reported buyer — Jakarta-based Buana Lintas Lautan — denied having anything to do with such a deal.
Last but not least, managers at Gatik itself did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
A straightforward explanation for a sale considered or concluded would be that Gatik is beginning to learn some of the asset-playing arts displayed by the traditional shipowners it has been so far buying vessels from.
The Marathon used to trade as Seaborn with Thenamaris before the shrewd Greek owner agreed to sell it to Gatik’s clients in mid-October last year, probably for about $27m.
Another, perhaps more far-fetched, explanation could be that Gatik has bitten off more vessels than it can chew, assembling such a big fleet that it no longer knows how to employ all of it.
Set up in March last year, a month after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the Mumbai-based outfit has come to be involved in managing 30 crude and product tankers, according to S&P Global Markets.
VesselsValue even lists 38 ships under Gatik’s management with a current market value of $1.21bn.
Based in a jurisdiction that has imposed no sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Gatik-managed ships have not been shy about lifting Russian crude and oil products.
According to data compiled by TradeWinds from open sources such as the Russian Tanker Tracker and professional online data platform Signal Ocean, nine Gatik ships have embarked laden from Russian ports over the past two months to diverse destinations — from China and Turkey to Latvia and Germany.
Several other companies, mostly based in Greece but also in Turkey, Monaco or Norway, have been making such journeys as well.
Even if Gatik has indeed sold the Marathon, the company seems to be still in expansion mode overall.
The pace of its purchases accelerated in December, and in January the company was even linked to its first VLCC — the 318,100-dwt Poros (renamed Onrim, built 2008) — which previously was with Embiricos company Aeolos Management.
Jonathan Boonzaier contributed to this article
