“K” Line signs $2Bn bulk deal with Jindal Group

Japanese operator “K” Line has secured a ten-ship long-term consecutive voyage charter (CVC) deal worth about $2Bn over ten years with subsidiaries of the Mumbai-based O. P. Jindal Group. JSW Steel and JSW Energy will employ two Panamaxes, three post-panamaxes and five Capesizes for ten years each with deliveries commencing this year and concluding in 2014. They will primarily carry coking and steam coal from Australia, Indonesia, China and South Africa to the company’s plants in India. “K” Line said that revenues from the ten new voyage charter contracts would total about $200M per year and that, together with one COA and two CVCs previously signed with JSW companies, the red-funnel operator would carry over 15M tonnes – or 40% – of the expanding group’s coal imports by 2015. Daisuke Yamagishi of “K” Line’s Drybulk Project Division told Fairplay that “newbuildings may be used to cover these CVCs, but the exact vessel assignment has not been decided.”