Dogged confidence in tankers at a time when the sector’s prospects looked dim is paying off big time for Athens-based Aerio Shipmanagement.
The low-profile company has been offering for sale the 109,600-dwt LR2 product tanker Sea Senor (built 2006) — a vessel that was trading as Zantoro when Aerio agreed to buy it for $12.6m in February 2022, just one day before the Ukraine war broke out.
The vessel is worth nearly three times as much now.
Some Greek brokers report that a deal has already been concluded for the Chinese-built ship, with undisclosed buyers offering an eye-watering $35.5m.
Sources at Aerio Management, however, dismiss that information and say that no deal has been concluded, even at a preliminary level.
The Zantoro was one of four tankers that Aerio bought between June 2021 and July 2022. The company’s three other acquisitions were smaller MR2 product tankers.
The acquisitions reflected the confidence of Aerio chief executive officer Thanassis Kossidas, a former ship finance man at Deutsche Bank, that tanker markets would eventually turn around.
That bet has paid off handsomely, with tanker freight rates and asset values skyrocketing after the Ukraine war.
Aerio has not yet sold any of the four tankers it purchased before the market turnaround.
At a shipping conference in Piraeus in July, Kossidas estimated that Western sanctions against Russia, the main reason for the tanker market boom, will not go away any time soon.
“The reality is that sanctions are there to stay. I don’t see this changing in the next years,” he said.
