Tuesday, February 17, 2009
NYK affiliate hit by Samsun bankruptcy
Mike Grinter, Hong Kong - Tuesday 17 February 2009
THE latest victim of insolvent South Korean shipping company Samsun Logix is Nippon Yusen Kaiun affiliate Taiheiyo Kaiun Co.
The Japanese bulk specialist told Lloyd’s List that it had sub-chartered two handymax vessels to Samsun Logix.
A source at Taiheiyo Kaiun said: “In addition to outstanding charter fees of two years at around $46,800 per day and two and a half years at $27,600 per day, Samsun Logix also owes this company ¥181.28m ($1.4m) for shipping service fees.”
The source was not prepared to divulge which operator it had chartered the two vessels from.
As yet the vessels have not been returned and Taiheiyo is undecided whether it will attempt to operate the ships in the greatly depressed spot market, as the company had chartered the vessels for similar periods from the original owner.
“We are still considering our approach to this problem but bringing an action against Samsun Logix would seem inevitable,” the source said.
Taiheiyo continues to negotiate with another foreign sub-charterer that announced it wanted to prematurely dissolve contracts on four panamax and handymax vessels that the company has chartered. So far Taiheiyo has refused to accept the intended breach of contract.
In recent months Taiheiyo has sought to mitigate the likely losses incurred in a depressed market through the sale of some of its tankers.
It successfully sold three very large crude carriers to parent company NYK and accrued a profit of ¥2.9bn.
In January, however, it was less successful when attempting to sell a fourth VLCC to Malaysia’s Eraru (L) Ltd, when the buyer failed to come up with the funds within the contracted period.
The source said it had so far failed to raise any interest for the VLCC from other parties but was hopeful of making a sale before the end of fiscal 2008.
Samsun Logix filed for court receivership at Seoul central district court on February 6.
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