Concordia hails new generation of tankers

Concordia Maritime claims it has saved millions of dollars by investing in S2000 V-Max, an industrial niche-market ship that offers low transport costs and high safety to its clients.

Concordia president Lars Carlsson said the tanker, which was designed by Stena's newbuilding division, would be affected by the tanker market like any other vessel, but it would survive better as it had its own market.

'The S2000 V-Max is a tanker which can compete favourably with any other large tanker as it may economically save 20 per cent on the freight cost or increase the profit correspondingly,' he said.

Concordia, which will have these ships in its future fleet, claims to have jumped two generations of very large crude carriers (VLCCs).

Concordia has gone directly from a 1970s-built fleet to a 2000-built fleet, skipping the SBT tanker of the 80s and the first-generation, double-hull tankers of the 90s.

Mr Carlsson said that on the safety side, the tanker would beat any VLCC on manoeuvrability, speed and ability to lighter crude oil at sea under safe conditions.

'Concordia would never order ships on pure speculation just because ships may be considered as 'cheap'. We have a strong requirement to generate a satisfactory return on the investment. On the S2000 V-Max investment, we expect to generate at least 12 per cent,' Mr Carlsson said.

Few in the VLCC industry had bothered to try to design a safe and efficient tanker for long-term transport.

Focus in production at the yards had been on cost-efficiency, while owner focus had been on buying at the right time.

While the film industry spent US$200 million on the movie Titanic, that amount was more than the combined effort in the shipping industry to develop safe tankers.

On the question of single or double propulsion, he said it was a matter of technical development and availability.

In tanker shipping it would be regarded as irresponsible to use single-engined ships 10 years from now.

When the double-skin ships started to be delivered from the yards, they were few and had no impact, Mr Carlsson said.

Soon they would represent 50 per cent of the ship population and would dominate essential trades, making it difficult for single-skin tankers to compete five to 10 years from now.

Similarly, it would take a few years for the S2000 V-Max to become numerous enough to have a market impact, Mr Carlsson said.