Greece’s Atlas Maritime has revealed its latest expansion moves in tankers and car carriers.
TradeWinds reported this month that the company was tipped to sign newbuilding contracts for two aframaxes at DH Shipbuilding, formerly known as Daehan Shipbuilding.
Speaking to TradeWinds on the sidelines of a Marine Money conference in Athens on Thursday, Atlas owner Leon Patitsas confirmed that the deal has been signed and clarified that the vessels will be coated LR2 tankers.
The scrubber-fitted ships are scheduled for delivery in October and November 2024. If Atlas decides to exercise an option for a third vessel, DH will deliver it in the first quarter of 2025.
Atlas has a separate option to upgrade its LR2 newbuildings to ice class.
Market sources are putting a price tag of about $64m on each of the vessels.
Patitsas, whose family has traditionally been active in bulkers and tankers, has lately been pushing Atlas to dip a toe in car carriers.
To gear the company towards more forward-looking technologies and transport modes, Atlas ordered a pair of LNG dual-fuel 7,000-ceu pure car/truck carrier newbuildings at China’s CIMC Raffles Offshore Engineering earlier this year for about $85m each.
Patitsas is now upping the ante in this sector, exercising an option to bring the Atlas orderbook at Raffles to three ships, due for delivery in September 2024, April 2025 and in 2026.
On its website, Atlas describes its car carrier investment as a “perfectly timed” move, given the “fast-tightening” market in the sector, in which freight rates and ship values have soared.
It was another perfectly timed newbuilding order, which created some of the liquidity that Atlas is using in its latest initiatives.
In a textbook countercyclical move, the company ordered five aframaxes at Daehan between the end of 2020 and early 2021, when tanker newbuilding prices were rock bottom.
In early 2022, Patitsas flipped two of these vessels in a resale that netted him about $30m in total.
In theory, nothing prevents him realising similarly impressive margins if he decides to sell the remaining three aframaxes he has under construction at Daehan and that are due for delivery between February and April next year — the 115,500-dwt Freeport Star, Galveston Star and Delaware Star (all built 2023).
Patitsas’ fresh newbuilding order for at least two LR2s at Daehan’s successor DH Shipbuilding is the first contract that the reborn South Korean shipyard is known to have signed since its restructuring.
Another one is probably on the cards.
TradeWinds reported last month that DH Shipbuilding was also close to signing an order for a suezmax pair from giant public tanker owner Euronav.
Officials at DH and Euronav declined to comment on the information.
If the Euronav deal is officially confirmed, DH is believed to have sold out all its remaining delivery berth slots for 2024.
