With the recovery of the market, the Maersk Tankers finally decided to build an LR2 product tanker after waiting for a year and a half.
Recently, Danish tanker owner and operator Maersk Tankers announced that six of the 10 LR2 products tanker orders from the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. entered into force.
Maersk Tankers confirmed that the board of directors of the Maersk Product Tankers has approved orders for six LR2 product tankers from the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. And the first new ship will be delivered in 2020, the remaining five ships within two years. The Maersk Tankers stated that the development of market relies on whether the remaining 4 LR2 product tankers in this order goes into effect or not.
The Maersk Tankers announced that current market makes the investment attractive for it can provide competitive asset prices. This fleet updating will help maintain the fleet competitiveness, meet customer’s demand, and ensure the Maersk Tankers hold its crucial role in the market of LR2 tanker.
Soren C. Meyer, CSO of the Maersk Tankers, pointed out that after delivery of these new vessels, Maersk Tankers will be responsible for the commercial, technical and corporate management of the six new vessels. This will expand the fleet size managed by Maersk Tankers and provide ship data which will benefit the strategy of providing the industry-leading business performance of the Maersk Tankers.
It is known that the letter of intent to this batch of LR2 product tankers was signed as early as October 2016. Maersk Group did not disclose the specific price. According to market sources, the contract price was about 44 million US dollars each. However, there was also news that the price of each tanker is about 41 million US dollars.
At the beginning of last year, Maersk Tankers confirmed that it had ordered 10 115,000 DWT LR2 product tankers from Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. , Ltd. At that time, Maersk revealed that the order remained a "unique contract structure", a non-mandatory contract with an optional order but the contract price remained unchanged. This also means that this order remains uncertain in the future.
Currently, the fleet of Maersk Tankers operates 161 product tankers, including 80 owned vessels and 23 chartered vessels, in addition to 58 commercial vessels.
Source: eworldship.com