Trafigura's Volare Raises $500 Million for an Oslo VLCC Listing as the Supertanker Orderbook Hits 38% of the Fleet

Volare Shipping, the company Trafigura set up to own its growing VLCC fleet, has raised about $500 million in an oversubscribed private placement ahead of a listing on Euronext Growth Oslo. Trading is expected to start around October 5 under the ticker VLCC. The placement sold 30.7 million new shares at NOK154 each and values the Singapore-incorporated company at about NOK11.5 billion, or $1.2 billion. If the over-allotment option is taken up in full, Trafigura keeps about 53% and placement investors hold the other 47%.

Volare starts with six VLCCs trading and eight newbuildings arriving through October 2028. The newbuildings are larger than standard VLCCs, with extra tank coatings and heating to widen the range of cargoes they can take, and they're ammonia-ready dual-fuel designs. Once the programme is complete, the 14-ship fleet should average about three years old. The money goes to the remaining newbuilding instalments, debt reduction and repaying an intra-group loan. Trafigura keeps commercial management through its shipping arm, which runs about 500 vessels, around half of them oil tankers.

Investors Are Paying Up

Volare isn't alone. Hafnia placed 35.49 million new shares at NOK80 this week, about 8% below its last close before the deal, raising roughly $300 million. At the same time it lifted its stake in Torm to about 19.85%, paying $34 a share for another 1.7 million shares. Its first big block of Torm, bought last year, cost $22 a share. Across three purchases Hafnia has now put about $514 million into its Danish rival.

The earnings behind this are hard to argue with. The ClarkSea Index, a cross-sector measure of ship earnings, has reached $64,569 a day, 27% above its previous record from 2007. VLCC earnings on the Middle East to China route passed $1 million a day this month. One-year VLCC time charters are close to $150,000 a day, almost triple a year ago, and three-year deals have been done around $100,000. A nearly new VLCC was recently resold for a record $200 million, and one 15-year-old supertanker reportedly sold for more than the cost of a newbuilding. The world fleet is expected to earn more than $300 billion in profit this year, against about $200 billion in 2025.

The Orderbook Is the Other Side of the Trade

Shipyards have been busy on the other side. VLCCs under construction now equal about 38% of the existing fleet, up from 14% a year ago. Ships ordered into a boom arrive two or three years later, into whatever market exists by then.

Volare's newbuildings deliver progressively through 2028. Investors buying at NOK154 are paying for today's cash flow; what they'll own by 2028 depends on whether the disruption behind today's rates (Hormuz above all, with sanctions still splitting the fleet) is still there when the new ships arrive.

Cargo Owners Pay the Freight

The bill for the boom lands on cargo owners. Shipping Venezuelan crude to the US Gulf Coast now costs nearly $7 a barrel, more than double the level at the end of August. That was enough to stall October sales, because the oil now lands more expensive than competing Canadian barrels. Moving crude from Houston to Asia costs about $26 a barrel. At those levels freight decides which barrels travel, and buyers are turning to closer supplies and smaller ships.

That's the tension in every tanker raise this autumn. Owners earn from the friction; their customers are working hard to route around it.