Stealth Maritime adds four tankers in $422m expansion

By Tom Whitfield

Stealth Maritime, backed by Greek shipowner Harry Vafias, has added four vessels to its South Korean tanker newbuilding programme: two 320,000-dwt VLCCs and two 115,000-dwt LR2s, in deals estimated at around $422 million.

Greek financial and shipbuilding sources identified the contracts this week. Hanwha Ocean will build the VLCC pair, while HD Hyundai Heavy Industries will build the LR2s. The additions take Stealth's tanker orderbook to 20 vessels and lift the wider programme's estimated value to approximately $2.05 billion.

The $422 million package matches the sum of the reported indicative prices: $133 million for each VLCC, or $266 million, plus $78 million for each LR2, or $156 million. Those figures make the latest orders roughly one-fifth of the wider programme's stated value.

What does this expansion change for shippers and carriers?

For shippers and freight forwarders, the practical change is prospective, not immediate. No new tonnage now. Direct rate effects come later. The first delivery window opens in 2029, and the vessels cannot alter current charter markets or freight rates directly.

When the ships enter service, the fleet mix could broaden shipper and forwarder options across 320,000-dwt VLCCs for large-scale liquid cargoes and 115,000-dwt LR2s for product trades. Yet the benefit is staged, and no vessel in the package delivers before 2029.

Forwarders can use the orders for long-range fleet planning; they cannot treat them as current charterable tonnage. For carriers and owners, the programme locks in capital against 2029-30 deliveries while restoring Vafias to a segment he left roughly two decades ago. Any earnings exposure remains years away.

Stealth has moved beyond a renewed VLCC position into a broader slate that also includes LR2s, MRs and suezmaxes. That matters because the latest package is one part of a larger build-out rather than a stand-alone move in 320,000-dwt tankers.

Deliveries stretch from 2029 into 2030

The two new VLCCs are expected in 2030. The LR2 pair is scheduled across 2029 and 2030, making this a phased capacity addition rather than a single fleet event.

That timetable is the commercial variable. A 2029 delivery enters service before a 2030 one, and each arrival will meet whatever tanker market exists then. The announcement therefore offers no basis for treating the fleet as immediate supply.

For shippers, waiting is the answer. For carriers, potential earnings are spread across the two delivery years. The fleet can expand the choice of vessel size later without changing today's available tonnage.

A return to VLCCs after about 20 years

The latest move follows Stealth's return to VLCC contracting earlier this year. Vafias booked two 320,000-dwt ships at Hanwha Ocean at approximately $132.5 million each, marking his return to the segment after about two decades.

In July, Vafias added two 50,000-dwt MR product tankers at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries. Those orders extended an existing programme of suezmaxes, LR2s and MRs at South Korean yards.

The sequence gives the latest four-ship deal its context. Stealth is not making one isolated VLCC move; it is adding to a multi-class, multi-yard programme whose tanker orderbook now stands at 20 vessels.

Hanwha Ocean holds both the earlier and latest VLCC orders, while HD Hyundai carries the new LR2 pair and the July MR pair. The split gives each builder a clear role in Vafias's revived large-tanker programme.

For shippers, then, the capacity clock starts in 2029, while any broader rate effect remains tied to the 2029-30 delivery schedule rather than the announcement itself.