Cash buying activity in India has been heavily impacted by Covid-19 and left some Cash Buyers exposed with tonnage that was bought on an ‘as is, where is’ basis prior to the Covid-19 market closure. Quite some money has been burned for vessels waiting to be re-sold to end Breakers and subsequently beached. Owners of other vessels failed to deliver to Cash Buyers or were refused by Cash Buyers invoking Force Majeure Clauses.
Commercially the markets dropped by around $100 in India from levels $10-15 below the $400 per lt/ldt seen before the lockdown and stop of operations in March to levels below the $300 mark after markets re-opened again in late May / June 2020. Although we saw signs of recovery in most stock markets worldwide, the amount of tonnage on the supply side and modest demand for melted scrap kept the rebound limited to $ 20-25, trading around the $300-320 lt/ldt mark.
Respectively some huge amounts have been lost on Vessels that have been taken over in February / March and could only get re-sold and beached in June.
In June and July Cash Buyers got more active again and in Alang we have been seeing a total of 50 Vessels and 653.296 mt /ldt got sold for recycling since beginning of April. Most active Cash Buyers by far have been GMS, Best Oasis, Ace Exim, NKD and Wirana. These 5 Buyers accounting for 39 Vessels and ~517.000 mts/ldt.
| Buyers | Vessels | $ Mio | ~ Price | LDT | ~ Age |
| Best Oasis | 11 | 49 | $ 318 | 154.042 | 30 |
| GMS | 10 | 48,2 | $ 314 | 153.389 | 22 |
| Ace Exim | 6 | 18,9 | $ 308 | 61.336 | 31 |
| NKD | 6 | 21,2 | $ 305 | 69.400 | 24 |
| Wirana | 6 | 30,8 | $ 321 | 96.000 | 27 |
