Greece’s Polembros Shipping has inked its debut contracts with New Times Shipbuilding.
The Chinese yard will construct two suezmax tankers for the Greek shipowner, with very early delivery dates in April and May 2025, Polembros managing director George Vakirtzis confirmed.
The vessels will be LNG-ready and will be equipped with scrubbers.
Spiros Polemis-controlled Polembros, an owner of both tankers and bulkers, once preferred Japanese and South Korean yards for its crude carriers.
But its first taste of a Chinese-built tanker tonnage — another suezmax built six years ago at Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding — was positive, encouraging the Greek shipowner to keep looking for newbuilding opportunities in China.
This led to subsequent talks with New Times, which ultimately bore fruit this week.
“They gave us two incredibly good suezmax slots,” Vakirtzis said.
These will be the first newbuildings to join the Polembros fleet since the company took delivery of the 160,000-dwt Ithaki Warrior (built 2017).
Polembros, which currently manages 11 crude tankers and 12 bulkers, is known to be engaging in regular fleet renewal.
As part of that strategy, it offloaded two of its oldest suezmaxes recently, raising more than $80m in the process. The 157,300-dwt Kimolos Warrior (built 2013) has since been renamed Salty Wolf, and the 115,300-dwt Kythira Warrior (built 2006) is now the Ionia.
Selling older tonnage amid soaring tanker prices must have been a relatively easy decision to make.
Replacing the outgoing tonnage with newbuildings, however, is much trickier.
Widespread uncertainty over future fuel technologies has made owners reluctant to book tankers, driving the orderbook for such vessels to multi-year lows.
Tanker ordering, nevertheless, picked up lately, and Polembros is a good example why.
“We couldn’t wait any longer. We have customers that we need to service,” Vakirtzis said.
As it orders newbuildings, Polembros is also taking care to hedge its bets.
The Greek company has booked a limited number of ships. Its newbuilding exposure will remain modest even if it decides later this year to book an additional pair of newbuidings, possibly sister ship suezmaxes.
The tankers Polembros just ordered will have strengthened decks ready to take on LNG tanks. Scrubbers will provide enhanced environmental performance until more advanced fuels and technologies become available.
Similar considerations have prompted other Greek owners to go ahead with tanker newbuilding orders recently. Chinese shipyards, and New Times in particular, have been a major beneficiary of that trend.
On Thursday, TradeWinds reported that George Procopiou’s Dynacom Tankers has booked two aframax newbuildings at the yard and is also considering placing a pair of VLCCs there as well.
On the same day, it emerged that Evangelos Marinakis’ Capital Maritime & Trading booked another pair of dual-fuel LNG newbuildings at New Times, bringing its total with the yard to six.
Last week, Navios Maritime Partners has been identified by some brokers as the party behind an order for up to eight LR2 newbuildings at Zhoushan Changhong.
Greek shipowners are believed to have placed orders for about 60 tankers so far this year, not including options, according to data compiled by TradeWinds.
Most of these ships have been ordered in China.
