HEIDMAR, an operator of tanker pools, will expand its fleet after forging a joint venture with Capital Ship Management, which is controlled by Greek owner Evangelos Marinakis.

All 32 tankers managed by Capital Ship will join Heidmar’s pools, which will expand to 60 crude, product and chemical tankers — ranging from 10,000 dwt to very large crude carriers — from just seven ships in November 2020.

Heidmar chief executive Pankaj Khanna said the “exceptional performance” of its pools and the company’s established transparent trading platform served as key in attracting quality tanker owners such as Capital Ship.

Capital Ship’s fleet includes 12 VLCCs in addition to 20 smaller crude and product tankers.

Mr Khanna cited the merits of consolidation that can be achieved efficiently and simply via pooling of resources, a strategy which other players will likely emulate.

“Our customers are large and getting larger and expect to be serviced by organisations that have the heft and flexibility to adapt to their needs and invest in required technology and personnel to meet that end.”

The joint venture comes as Heidmar maintains its focus “on executing the vision of a services platform that will offer financial and strategic owners of tankers or bulkers options to leverage their assets for the best returns,” Mr Khanna said.

Heidmar is proactively moving towards digitalisation and its 18-year-old in-house platform is now capable of capturing data for the monitoring of carbon dioxide emissions from its managed ships, he added.