Danish shipping company Norden has purchased two South Korean-built MR product tankers as a way of getting ready for the anticipated market improvement moving forward.
The 2009-built vessels, named Nord Magic and Nord Minute, have a deadweight capacity of 50,000 tonnes each. The purchase brings Norden’s tanker fleet to up to 58 vessels including chartered vessels.
Out of these 24 tankers are owned by Norden, while the rest are chartered vessels. The vessels are operated through Norient Product Pool (NPP).
“ While product tanker market conditions have suffered from oversupply and weak demand this year, we expect an improvement towards 2020. Recently, the crude tanker market has recovered strongly, oil price has declined to a 12-month low and oil inventories have been drawn significantly,” CEO Jan Rindbo said in comment.
“This points to a recovery in demand for product tankers and improving market conditions. We therefore believe this purchase is a good opportunity to take advantage of the relatively low prices on tonnage now, to increase the capacity.”
The two vessels are expected to join Norden’s owned fleet in December 2018. The company’s fleet includes also 12 Handysize vessels and two LR1 tankers on charter.