Premuda is heading towards a new investment plan in navy dry but in the meantime has taken delivery of the tanker PS Tokyo ordered in Japan a couple of years ago.
The CEO Marco Fiori explained to SHIPPING ITALY that the company is “looking at new investments in dry bulk, always with our usual formula of ships on charter with purchase options. Regarding the type and size, handysize class bulk carriers are of particular interest.”
Premuda, which today controls a fleet consisting only of tankers, between the end of December 2024 and January 2025 had in fact sold the last remaining bulk carriers it owned, waiting for a downward correction in the freight market in the first months of the current year. Within a few weeks, the Four Otello and the Four Aida had been sold (for $22.6 million with a capital loss of $2.5 million) and shortly after the dry bulk carrier Four Nabucco was also sold (for $10.9 million).
The new course (post management buyout) of the Genoese shipping company controlled by Pillarstone and with participation from the top management (Marco Fiori, Gaudenzio Bonaldo Gregori, Enrico Barbieri and Andrea Berlingieri) therefore intends to return to operating vessels also employed in the transport of dry bulk.
In the meantime, however, at the Japanese shipyard Minaminippon Shipbuilding of Imabari Shipbuilding Group, the chairman, the CEO, the CFO and the legal counsel of Premuda personally took part in the christening ceremony of the new 52,000 gross tonnage chemical-product oil carrier renamed PS Tokyo. The godmother of the ship was Gavina Valentina Tedde, wife of Enrico Barbieri.
A company note explains that Yukito Igaki, president and owner of Imabari Shipbuilding Group, also attended the christening ceremony, which was attended by representatives of the Japanese maritime sector and some important stakeholders of the Genoese company. Premuda had ordered the PS Tokyo in 2023 through a typical 7-year operating lease scheme with a purchase option after the third year; the ship will now enter service with the charterer ST Shipping by virtue of a fixed-rate time-charter with a profit sharing clause.
The PS Tokyo is the fourth piece of the synergy between Premuda, Shoei Kisen and Imabari Shipbuilding Group after the Yufu Crown (2020), the PS Imabari (2022) and the PS New Orleans (2022). With the entry of this newly built MR tanker, Premuda’s fleet reaches eight units, with an average age of 6.5 years. In addition to these, the company led by Marco Fiori also operates three LR/Aframax tankers and one panamax dry bulk carrier, for a total of twelve managed units (average age 9.2 years).
Also regarding news about the Genoese shipping company, the latest financial statements (2024) closed with net revenues falling to 47 million (from 58 million in 2023), with an operating result of 2.7 million (from 15.2 million the previous year) and with a positive net result of just over 1 million (from 17.6 million), also reveals that Premuda has decided to liquidate the company Csm Italy Srl, a joint venture with Columbia Shipmanagement Ltd in which it held a 30% stake.
The report mentions a liquidation initiated “in the context of a broader review of the existing agreements with the industrial partner Columbia Ship Management Limited” and indeed Fiori explains that “the collaboration will evolve differently in the future.”
Established in 2021, the Csm Italy joint venture aimed to offer the Italian shipping company a wide spectrum of services ranging from technical and commercial management, to the purchasing hub, company formation, capital raising, partner search, training, and even tracking and monitoring the operational performance of ships.Not only “financing solutions to bring Italian players back into the shipping market,” said the president of Columbia, Mark O’Neil, but also an innovative model (for Italy) of shareholding participation in the company. “We give the opportunity, in fact we suggest, to our clients to also become shareholders because we adopt maximum transparency in what we do and we want to pool our expertise. We want to be a partner and not just a service provider.”
N.C.
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