Latest company news
Here we post our latest company news to keep you updated.
MV "BERNHARD OLDENDORFF"
One of our gravity type selfunloaders, M/V "Bernhard Oldendorff" has recently completed a top-off operation, which enables US coal exporters to use bigger ships when selling coal to Asian clients. Our vessel is in the CSL selfunloader pool, which has concluded a contract with Xcoal Energy & Resources to tranship coal. Capesize bulk carriers are partially laden with some 130,000 tons in the port of Baltimore, but because of the general draft limitations prevailing in US East Coast ports, the big ships are being topped off with more cargo off the coast of Nova Scotia, which enables them to carry a full cargo of of normally 170 - 200,000 tons of coking coal to Asia.
Flensburger sold to investors
Our shipbuilding subsidiary FLENSBURGER Schiffbau-Gesellschaft mbH + Co KG has been sold to investors in a Management-Buy-Out (MBO). Please find below the respective English and German language press announcements.
92 ships sold in five boom years
During the 5 years of booming markets from August 2003 until August 2008, Oldendorff Carriers sold 92 ships at prices totalling abt US$ 1.9 billion, as listed in the table below. This includes 10 ships where BB-charterers executed their purchase options, so we sold these ships to them in 2007 and 2008. The 92 ships consist of 11 Panamaxes, 12 Supramaxes, 43 Handies, 23 MPP's and 3 Ro/Ro's. During the same period, we acquired 26 ships from the market plus 16 ships by excercising low-priced purchase options while another 2 Panamaxes were converted to conveyor belt selfunloaders, which means the size of our own fleet effectively shrank net by 48 units during the past few years, whereas we have increased the number of vessels on trip and short period charter.
Windmill transportation
Since 2002, we have carried about 2,000 windmill towers including blades on our OHBS vessels. This has been a challenging business operationally and commercially in terms of handling the cargo safely and meeting the standards of our industrial customers.
Third party shipmanagement
OLDENDORFF CARRIERS has decided to offer its shipmanagement services to third parties. Clients can benefit from our experience in managing our own fleet and make full use of our existing resources and economies of scale. Newbuilding or conversion projects can be handled as well, both in the design and contracting phase as well as in the supervision period.
Index-based floating charters
Charter contracts with an index-based floating rate are becoming more commonplace and are an interesting alternative to pool employment. The owner earns a full market rate without the administrational hussle of pool accounts, pool meetings and risk profiles.
Newbuildings from Japan
Until last year, over a period of 15 years, we have received a total of 20 newbuildings from our friends at Saiki Heavy Industries Co Ltd., a subsidiary of Onomichi Dockyard, Japan.
Senator Hotel goes 5 stars
We are happy to report that our 450-bed Radisson Blu Senator Hotel has been awarded the 5-star classification from 2008 onwards. The hotel was built in 1992 and acquired by us in 2000. Last year, all rooms and suites as well as the heated pool were redesigned and refurbished.