A London-based family with extensive holdings in the African oil industry has emerged as co-owners in Laurent Cadji-run Union Maritime.
Brothers Ramesh and Bhupendra Kansagra are low-key shareholders but substantial ones, who have stayed out of the spotlight since the company was founded 15 years ago.
Documents including court papers and corporate filings show that — via family investment company Solai Holdings — they are equal shareholders with the Cadji family in most Union Maritime affiliates for which information is accessible.
The brothers appear as directors and shareholders of one-ship registered owning entities, multiship holding companies, ship-operating and ship-management ventures.
The legal proceedings did not involve the Kansagras or Union Maritime as a party.
Union Maritime is the UK’s biggest independent tanker owner, whose trading centres on West Africa.
Its website lists a fleet of 54 ships, including nine bulkers and three offshore support vessels.
A recent check of AIS ship tracking data showed about 20 of the tankers in West Africa.
The Kansagras have made headlines in India, the UK and Nigeria, although the shipowning side of their wealth has escaped publicity to date.
In recent years, they have featured on a Business Insider “rich list” of the wealthiest Asians in the UK.
Investments have included property, industrial and upstream oil investments, and a shareholding in Indian budget airline SpiceJet. But fuel distribution in Africa is the Kansagras’ forte.
Ramesh Kansagra is chairman of over-the-counter traded 11PCL, the former downstream operations of Mobil in Nigeria that ExxonMobil sold to domestic investors in 2017.
His son, Rishi Kansagra, is a director of stock-listed Nigerian Independent Petroleum Co (Nipco), a fuel distribution company and tank farm owner and the controlling shareholder in 11PCL.
Through family-controlled Purebond Ltd, the Kansagras hold a 64% share in Nipco. Rishi is also a director of UK-based Vivo Energy, which distributes Shell and Engen products in Africa.
The Kansagras’ shipping connection surfaced recently in documentation related to a series of Maritime Union’s sales of the seven small chemical tankers that comprised the fleet of Hudson Chemical Tankers, not all of which had been disclosed.
But the brothers were shipowners before Union Maritime was formed. In an Indian tax law case last year, ship manager Rajeev Kumar Singh testified that he managed ships for the Kansagras’ company Purebond, originally as an employee of Kishore Rajvanshy’s Fleet Management.
After Union Maritime was set up in 2006, the Kansagras encouraged Singh to leave Fleet Management and set up Premier Ship Management and Sovereign Ship Management — in which Maritime Union now holds a 80% share and Singh 20% — making Singh eligible for treatment as an associated entity of the foreign managers.
Union Maritime’s other ship-management ventures include in-house Atlantic Ship Management and Virono Union Maritime, a joint venture with members of Greece's Tomazos family.
A Union Maritime spokesman declined to comment on questions about the Kansagras’ shareholdings, and efforts to reach the Kansagra brothers were unsuccessful.
