A large, modern product tanker changed ownership for the third time in the short four years it has been operating.
Major tanker player Minerva Marine revealed on its website that it took delivery on 25 October of the 109,900-dwt Hibernian Tide (built 2019) in a deal concluded earlier this month at $65.5m.
The ice-class tanker has started trading with the company as Minerva Zoe.
Confusingly, Minerva Marine also has another, much older ship with the same name. TradeWinds reported in June that the Andreas Martinos-led company was about to offload that vessel, the 105,300-dwt Minerva Zoe (2004), to Chinese interests for about $31m.
That transaction, however, apparently never materialised and Minerva continues to feature the old Minerva Zoe on its website, side by side with the new one.
Moves to sell the old Minerva Zoe and replace it with a young one under the same name are characteristic of the established market trend, in which Greek owners take advantage of surging ship values to sell their old tankers and reinvest part of the proceeds into much more modern tonnage.
Minerva’s appetite for LR2 tankers, such as the Hibernian Tide, does not come as a surprise. TradeWinds already reported in May that the company had signed a letter of intent for a single such vessel with Yangzijiang Shipbuilding in what would be its first tanker newbuilding order in four years.
Minerva, however, has not firmed up that LOI since, which suggests that it has found a shortcut to acquire modern LR2 tonnage by buying the Hibernian Tide instead.
Despite its young age of just four years, the vessel has already had a string of Greek owners.
The ship was initially known as Folegandros when Eletson Corp ordered it as a newbuilding at Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding.
Following Eletson’s financial troubles with creditors Cosco Shipping Leasing, the vessel passed in 2021 to Evangelos Marinakis’s Capital Maritime for $42m.
Marinakis renamed the vessel the Archelaos and flipped it a year later at an undisclosed price to clients of Eastaway Pte, a Singapore-based ship manager.
It is Eastaway’s clients who renamed the vessel yet again, as Hibernian Tide, and sold it to Minerva Marine now.
