Greek tanker owner IMS SA is moving into the aframax segment, reportedly buying two Japanese-built vessels from major player Teekay Tankers.
Several broking sources said the Greek shipowner is paying $16m each for the 106,000-dwt Explorer Spirit and Navigator Spirit (both built 2008), which were constructed at Japan's Tsuneishi Shipbuilding.
IMS is listed with a fleet of seven MR tankers built between 1999 and 2004, so this deal would see it enter a new market segment and provide some renewal of the company's fleet, as its current vessels have an average age of 19 years old.
The deal marks the first sale-and-purchase move for IMS since December, when the company sold the 47,000-dwt tanker Romeo (built 2002), according to data from VesselsValue, which shows that the ship is now in the fleet of Midgard Services.
IMS did not respond to requests for comment, while a Teekay Tankers executive told TradeWinds that the company does not comment on commercial matters.
Teekay Tankers is listed with 19 suezmaxes and 19 aframaxes. The latter are on average 13 years old.
When New York-listed Teekay Tankers reported its result for the third quarter of 2020 in November, it announced a repurchase of two unnamed aframaxes from a sale-and-leaseback company for a combined price of $29.6m.
It is believed that the deal involved buying the Explorer Spirit and Navigator Spirit back from Bank of Communications Financial Leasing, which implies that the Teekay Corp spin-off is netting a $2.4m profit from selling the pair to IMS.
