Wisdom Marine Lines CO’s board of directors has approved a proposal to purchase four handysize dry bulk carrier vessels to meet rising cargo demand.

The bulk shipper plans to assign Japan’s Imabari Shipbuilding Co Ltd and Nihon Shipyard Co Ltd to build two vessels with deadweight of 39,650 tonnes, it said.

The deal is estimated to cost less than US$58 million, it added.

Wisdom Marine also plans to assign Japan’s Namura Shipbuilding Co Ltd to build two vessels with deadweight of 40,000 tonnes and that deal would also cost less than US$58 million, the company said.

Handysize vessels are smaller bulk carriers with deadweight of between 24,000 and 40,000 tonnes, larger than the smallhandy vessels with deadweight of less than 24,000 tonnes, but smaller than handymax vessels with deadweight of up to 50,000 tonnes.

Wisdom Marine, which already has 43 handysize vessels among its 137 ships, said it decided to purchase another new four handysize vessels as market supply for such a type of vessel had been low.

“As the world’s bulk shippers have had a comparatively low interest in investing in handysize vessels over the past few years, the supply for such a type of vessel has been tight this year,” it said in a statement.

The new purchase came as the Baltic Handysize Index, which tracks spot freight rates of handysize bulk carriers, rose to 1,767 points, the highest since 2008.

Given that average daily freight rates for handysize vessels have surpassed US$30,000, Wisdom Marine expects to raise its rates when it renews contracts for its 24 handysize ships by the end of this year, it said.

The firm posted a pretax profit of NT$641 million (US$23.03 million) for last month.

Pretax profit for the first seven months of the year was NT$3.1 billion, compared with a net loss of NT$420 million a year earlier, company data showed.

Source: Taipei Times