Duoro Azul sells off its bargain ferry

The Douro Azul group has decided to cash in and sell off its recently acquired ship Atlântida, the company announced today.

Azul boss Mario Ferreira said that the board has "decided to give a new direction to the vessel" after he received ‘numerous requests’ from international operators to buy the vessel.

Douro Azul won the bidding for the Atlântida in July and completed the deal in September for the bargain price of €8.7 million, payable to the Portuguese state.

The ferry had been built in the Viana do Castelo shipyards (pictured) for the Regional Government of the Açores which later wriggled out of the order saying that the ship was not fast enough, by 1 knot.

The government was fed up with paying €2.5 million a year in insurance and other fees for a boat that just took up space and auctioned it off, at a bargain price.

The first successful bidder offered €13 million but it turned out that the virtually unheard of Thesarco Shipping was run by Captain Evangelos Saravanos who had a long history of breaching various maritime laws covering labour, environment, safety and maintenance of ships and their crews.

Captain Saravanos was involved between 2006 and 2010 in several cases of abandoning crew and of the deliberate sinking of ships all over the world in waters off Russia, Sri Lanka, Algeria and Greece.

Saravanos failed to complete on the purchase and Duoro Azul was, as second bidder, offered the ship at its bid price of €8.75 million, substantially less than the €50 million that the Regional Government of the Açores had contracted to pay and several millions less than the failed Thesarco bid.

Three months later Duoro Azul is selling the ship to a mysterious foreign buyer but the company added that the sale of the Atlântida, which it has earmarked for cruises up the Amazon, does not mean the end of such cruises and the company will look again at building a purpose built vessel, “preferably in Portugal."

Mário Ferreira added that “Through the numerous attractive proposals that have reached me from international operators, we had to rethink the future of the Atlântida and we are now considering concrete proposals that may involve Douro Azul in the continuity of the operation, or may not.”

Ferreira bought a bargain as the ship had a contracted price of €50 million - the shipyard still is paying back instalments on the €40 million received in advanced payments from the regional government of the Açores.

It is curious that these mysterious foreign bidders did not bid for the ship when it was auctioned off. Had the news of Thesarco’s €13 million bid been leaked to deter rival bidders?

There could be suspicion that Thesarco Shipping was set up to bid and then paid to disappear, leaving the way open for Duoro Azul in second place to bag the ship for a bargain.

If another bidder has come in close to Thesarco’s €13 million then the Greek company could have been funded to complete the deal and sell it on at cost to Duoro Azul at a later date, but this is speculation and any profit made by Duoro Azul by selling off its recently acquired bargain surely will have been as a result of legitimate business savvy.

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