Following the recent acquisition of four ice class container feeder vessels by an investor group represented by the Schulte Group, BSM has taken the first vessel, »Eilbek«, into management with the remaining three to follow by mid-April.
The »Eilbek« class feeder vessels are the [ds_preview]first ships constructed and adapted for operation in ice class conditions to be managed by BSM Germany. Jan Warmke, Managing Director of BSM Germany, said: »Management of these four ships marks another important milestone in BSM’s continuing expansion into more specialist market segments, following entry into service of the highly sophisticated wind energy Service Operation Vessel, »Windea La Cour«, last June and the recent delivery of her sister vessel, »Windea Leibniz«.
The ice class vessels were built in 2004 and 2005 at Meyer-Werft in Papenburg, Germany. Each has a capacity of 1,600 TEU and service speed of up to 20 knots. Following change of ownership, the vessels have been re-flagged from Liberia to Cyprus and will maintain their current time charter employments with Unifeeder.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) is an integrated maritime solutions leader, with more than 130 years of experience in the shipping industry. Managing a fleet of 600 vessels, 20,000 employees enable the delivery of efficient ship management services through a network of 10 ship management, 23 crew service and five wholly-owned maritime training centres across the world.
These four kielmax vessels were under management of Hamburg-based rival Hamburger Lloyd. The Schulte Group as BSM‘s parent company is said to have paid about 39 mill. $ en-bloc. The boxships were sold after their former KG (limited partnership) owning companies were declared insolvent at the end of last year.
