It has become far too expensive to place orders for MR ships, says Anthony Gurnee, CEO of Irish product and chemical tanker carrier Ardmore, which has in the last five years been highly active at shipyards in Korea and Japan, and the carrier still has ten newbuildings set for delivery during 2014 and 2015.
But expectations for a lucrative business based on a growing export out of the US, as the country’s shale production gets up and running, have in recent years made an increasing number of players shift their sights to the product tanker segment – Scorpio Tankers, Navig8 and Hafnia Tankers, just to name a few. The same thing goes for private equity and hedge funds, as they are increasingly investing in shipping. This March US-based private equity fund Blackstone bought shares in Ardmore amounting to six percent, just as the fund entered Hafnia Tankers last fall.
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