Costamare Bulkers positions for growth after clean-out of smallest vessels
Costamare Bulkers, the US-listed company that was recently spun off from the Costamare containership business, is continuing to reshape its owned fleet after a loss-making first half of 2025.
“We are progressing on our strategy to divest older and smaller tonnage, and replace them with younger and bigger-sized vessels,” said chief executive Gregory Zikos.
The company recently acquired an additional capesize vessel, bringing the owned fleet to 37 bulkers, and it is “proceeding with the disposal of five remaining handysize ships”, he said.
The owner has already agreed deals to sell the five vessels, all 36,000-37,000-tonners built between 2011 and 2013, as well as a 20-year-old panamax.
Costamare Bulkers posted an adjusted net loss of $15.8m for the first half of the year after subtraction of unrealised losses on derivatives and vessel sales.
Operations during the first quarter of 2025 were “nominal”, Zikos said.
The company acquired Costamare’s owned dry bulk fleet at the end of March and CBI, the trading platform for a chartered-in fleet, on May 6, just before the decoupling of the companies was completed.
“Trading losses, partly due to the liquidation of older legacy positions, have contributed to the first-half loss,” he said.
“As those positions are being closed, our goal is to manage a balanced trading book ancillary to the main shipowning business.
“With minimal leverage and net debt of approximately $10m, we are well positioned to grow opportunistically in the dry bulk sector.”
At the end of June, the company had liquidity of $242m on its balance sheet.
CBI has 39 bulkers on period charter, of which 29 are newcastlemaxes and capesizes, and the remaining 10 are kamsarmaxes.
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