With a breeze of spring leaping out of this year’s harsh winter doors, our team headed by technical manager Aydin Yilmaz and Operations/Training Manager Capt. Ömer Balta have taken delivery of the Ionian Trader from Greek owners Enterprise Shipping in Piraeus. The delivery took place smoothly in the afternoon of Friday Feb 17th and crews were exchanged in the evening. The highly professional delivery and acceptance procedure was related to an excellent road map the Greek owners had developed which was followed up by both parties. During the weekend husbandry, familiarization was instated and on Monday we changed class and flag, painted the new name Atlantis Arki to sides, and could go on her “maiden” voyage in the evening to load 4300mts of vegoil in Novorossiysk to discharge in Bejaia.
Atlantis Arki, named after a wonderful little island in the northern Dodecanese near Lipso & Patmos close to the Turkish coastline, marks a shift in Atlantis Tankers' fleet acquisition strategy.
Previously, Atlantis Tankers had focused solely on new built vessels. However, there are too many substandard vessels on the market especially since 2000 onwards where European yards have lost competitiveness and yards in Far East became the dominant supplier. Arki, built in 2008 at Celik Tekne in Istanbul for the account of a Norwegian-Turkish joint venture and equipped with high-standard European products such as MAN Augsburg propulsion system and Framo cargo pumping system, presented an exceptional opportunity.
The deal is supported by a finance with no equity portion and the favourable purchase price signals push to replenish the group's reserves and improve growth aspects, as this is part of an effort to move down the cost curve towards more advantaged assets as there is renewed concern about a supply glut that sent ripples through the shipping markets since mid of last year.
