Larine Tankers has sold its two LR1 product tankers to UAE-linked interests for a combined $110m, wiping out its entire owned fleet at the top of the secondhand market. The deal works out at roughly $55m apiece, according to shipbroker reports — a striking price for nine-year-old ships.

The vessels are the 2016-built Bluebird and Starling, both constructed at China's New Times Shipbuilding. Fleet databases list Larine Tankers as the registered owner of the two Singapore-flagged, 74,000 dwt ships, and they list nothing else under the company. Once the pair delivers, Larine is out of direct tanker ownership.

How the ships earned their keep

Bluebird and Starling have worked commercially in Hafnia's LR1 pool since February 2017 — nearly a decade of pool employment. Both still appear in the pool operator's current fleet register. That may not last. A reported sale of this kind typically triggers a change in commercial employment after handover, so Hafnia's LR1 lineup could lose two units.

For a pool operator, losing modern tonnage is never welcome. For the buyer, though, the attraction is obvious: relatively young ships, a yard pedigree from New Times, and immediate earning capability in a product tanker market where secondhand values stay firm.

What does this change for the market?

Not much in capacity terms — two LR1s is a drop in the global fleet. What the deal really does is price the market. It marks another data point in the widening gap between modern and older tanker tonnage, and that gap is getting hard to ignore.

This week's broker reports tell the story on both ends:

• Bluebird and Starling (2016-built, LR1): ~$55m each, UAE buyers.
• Jag Sparrow (2005-built, LR1): just over $23m — less than half the price for a ship only 11 years older.
• TP Affinity (2016-built aframax): linked earlier this month to a $73m sale by Belgium's Transpetrol to Turkish buyers.
• Scorpio Tankers: agreed to sell three older product tankers for a combined $180.5m as it pushes its fleet renewal programme forward.

Read that list again. Owners of modern product tankers are cashing out at levels that essentially hand them a free restart on capital, while buyers — many from the Gulf and Turkey — pay premiums for ships they can put straight into the earning fleet. Older vessels still sell, but at discounts that make the age premium brutally clear.

Who is Larine?

Larine sits within the private shipping interests of the Odfjell family. Marianne Odfjell has long-standing links to the Larine investment structure, and Norwegian company records place Larine Tankers Holding inside the wider ownership chain. The family name is better known for chemical tankers through Odfjell SE; Larine's two-ship LR1 venture ran on a separate, quieter track.

Selling both ships now, with secondhand prices strong, reads as a deliberate exit rather than a distressed clear-out. The family-linked investor gets $110m for assets bought into a very different rate environment, and walks away from direct exposure to product tanker cycles.

Loose ends

The buyers have not been identified beyond their UAE connection. No delivery or closing date has been disclosed, and neither Larine nor the buyers have confirmed the transaction publicly — the $110m figure and the vessel identities come from shipbroker reports.

That leaves the practical question for counterparties: when do Bluebird and Starling actually leave Hafnia's LR1 pool? Until handover, nothing changes commercially. After it, two modern LR1s move under new flags and, most likely, new commercial management.

If the current premium for modern tonnage holds — and deals like Transpetrol's $73m aframax and Scorpio's $180.5m disposals suggest it will — expect more owners of 2015-vintage product tankers to test the market with similar asking prices before the window narrows.