Greek owner relentlessly pursues growth, piling up modern vessel orders at DH Shipbuilding and CIMC Raffles
After a hugely successful asset play run with older ships and newbuildings, Leon Patitsas is reinvesting much of his profit into more tankers and large car carriers.
His Athens-based outfit Atlas Maritime has confirmed on its website that it has declared options to expand its considerable orderbook of such vessels to a total of 12 ships.
The freshly booked newbuildings are a pair of 157,000-dwt conventionally fuelled suezmaxes due to be completed at DH Shipbuilding in December 2025 and January 2026, respectively, as well as one additional 7,000-ceu dual-fuelled car carrier at CIMC Raffles, scheduled for delivery in July 2026.
No official information exists about the price at which the options were declared.
Market sources believe the price of the suezmaxes is at around the same level at which the Greek owner ordered his first ones at the same yard, at about $85m.
The cost of the car carriers, however, is believed to have appreciated to a price in the “high $80m”, compared with the $85m Atlas’ first such units cost.
The latest newbuildings bring Atlas’s orderbook to 12 vessels — four 114,900-dwt LR2s at DH Shipbuilding, four 157,000-dwt suezmaxes at the same yard, as well as another quartet of 7,000-ceu car carriers at CIMC Raffles.
Atlas is understood to have more options available to potentially boost the orderbook further.
How to double one’s cash
Patitsas is not alone in these projects, having Denmark’s European Maritime Finance (EMF) as a partner.
Atlas has not yet arranged employment for any of its newbuildings.
Given current market trends, however, Patitsas can expect to charter them at high rates on delivery.
The 115,100-dwt Freeport Star (built 2023), the company’s only ship in the water, is currently earning $50,000 per day in a one-year charter with BP.
The car carrier market has been moving in Atlas’ favour as well. As TradeWinds reported on 2 October, Gram Car Carriers saw its 7,000-ceu Viking Queen (built 2007) fixed by “a leading European operator”, probably Grimaldi, for five years at a juicy $62,300 per day.
Atlas has generated about $450m in proceeds over the past couple of years in highly lucrative sales of older tankers and aframax newbuildings ordered at the bottom of the market during the Covid pandemic.
It has reinvested much of that money into an extensive, $1.3bn newbuilding programme arranged by Clarksons that saw Atlas order 17 vessels, including four aframaxes it has flipped to Libya’s GNMTC, as TradeWinds reported.
Atlas managers say the company has doubled its money in these deals, on a cash-on-cash basis.
