Bahri clinches $756m financing for Marinakis VLCCs deal

Saudi Arabia’s flagship line Bahri has secured $756m to partially finance nine very large crude carriers it agreed to buy from Evangelos Marinakis-controlled Capital Maritime & Trading earlier this year.

The Riyadh-based company has penned a murabaha financing deal with Alinma Bank.

Bahri is paying about $1bn in total for the scrubber-fitted ships delivering by the end of the first quarter of 2025. Unless additional bank borrowings take place, the remaining portion of the purchase is expected to be financed by cash on hand.

The tanker giant has been actively renewing its VLCC fleet since late last year by taking a number of modern ships on the secondhand market, including four VLCCs from Korea Line Corporation in May.

The purchase announced in late August is expected to modernise the company’s oil shipping fleet, which currently stands at about 40 VLCCs, and enable phasing out older vessels. The majority of the nine vessels were built in South Korea and average 5.9 years and about 311,500 dwt.