The Hamburg-based tanker owner GEFO (Company for Oil Transport Ltd) has announced in the social media that it will order 10 new special sea-going tankers of 3850 Dwat with stainless steel tanks for chemical cargoes.
This new shipbuilding order comes after GEFO will have completed its current Euro 400 million investment programme when the last newbuilding is delivered in summer 2024.
Now a three-digit million amount will again be invested, as the company says.
These newbuilds will serve to expand GEFO’s fleet and replace some of the vessels that will reach the maximum age of 20 years accepted by most chemical shippers.
The new sea-going ships have been further optimised compared to the last series so that they consume less fuel and produce correspondingly lower emissions.
They are also designed in such a way that various environmentally friendly optimisations can be carried out at a later stage and innovative fuels can be used, GEFO mentions.
The 10 newbuilding’s are being built in China, at the Xiangyu shipyard in Nantong, with their delivery to take place between 2026 and 2028.
This shipyard belongs to the state-owned group Xiamen Xiangyu (XMXYG), number 42 of the largest companies in China by turnover and ranking 142nd of the “Fortune Global Top 500“.
GEFO was founded in 1961 and its current fleet comprises a total of 150 tankers, including chemical, gas and mineral oil tankers, which are deployed on the Rhine and in the ARA (Antwerp/Rotterdam/Amsterdam) chemical triangle.
What began as an exclusively inland operation barging oil on the Rhine is now an international network specialising in chemical liquids, LPG´s, liquid gases, mineral oil and worldwide bunker trading.
