Sinopacific Shipbuilding Group aims to drive orders with hot finance deals and ownership plans.
The China’s shipbuilding group has set up a Hong Kong-based owning company Crown Ship to control ships built for its own account in order to boost business amid the troubled newbuilding market.
Crown Ship has developed three new funding models for newbuildings.
Firstly, Sinopacific assistant chief executive Lou Jiwei says, "Crown Ship will provide pre-delivery funding," which will allow owners to make a 30% payment before deliveries and the remaining 70% upon delivery of the ships.
Moreover, Sinopacific will use its financing capacity outside China to help buyers fund newbuildings.
Secondly, newbuildings built by Sinopacific will be directly owned by Crown Ship and owners will be given the opportunity to buy the ships on a resale basis.
Thirdly, Crown Ship is to bareboat charter out its newbuildings to shipping players on a medium to long-term basis, with an obligation to purchase the vessels when the contract expires.
Meanwhile, Sinopacific is said to be under construction of  several 58,000-dwt and 63,500-dwt bulkers for Crown Ship. The number of newbuildings booked under the Hong Kong company has not been revealed yet, brokers believe at least half-a-dozen vessels have been contracted with delivery in 2013.