MV Maria Salamon is the sixth bulk carrier in the Dr. Peters Group. The ship was built in 2001 by the Japanese Imabari yard and put into service under the name Eastern Glory for shipowner Far Eastern Silo.

The ship is equipped with a Hitachi-Zosen B&W engine with 12,200 horsepower. The bulk carrier is 225 metres long, can load 88,364 m3 volume and is 74,117 dwt – a Panmax bulk carrier. The Panama flagged vessel is operated by Dobson Fleet Management and is chartered by Far East Silo & Shipping in Panama for eight and a half years. This Dr. Peters ship is fund number 85, ‘owned’ by 228 investors. Maria Salamon is typical of the size and age of Dr. Peters’ modern fleet of seven bulk carriers. The group expanded the fleet in 2003 by 13 vessels and the total number of ships is 63 with a combined tonnage of 6,657 million dwt.
Dr. Peters has some 34,000 investors who have invested no less than 3.3 billion Euro in funds set up by Dr. Peters, mostly within the areas of real estate and shipping. Since 1989 the owner of the Dr. Peters Group has been Jürgen Salamon and he is today the company’s Managing Director. We had the pleasure of meeting Jürgen Salamon in Hamburg where we asked him why German finance is so important for global shipping:
“A main reason is the taxation model where the write off rules for tax are favourable, the other the provisions for operating DS Funds in the German legal system. The many individual owners, like the 228 of Maria Salamon, trust us to make safe long-term investments in vessels run by leading ship managers on long term charters. In that sense, fund number 85 is typical of the way we operate. In addition we have a good capital source in Germany. We have been in ship finance since the 1990s, although the company was founded in 1960 by Dr. Karl Heinz Peters. In shipping this started with reefer vessels, then went on to container feeders and finally into oil tankers and bulk carriers,” says Salamon.
“We look at two main factors in ensuring safe investments for our investors,” continues Salamon. “The first being longterm investments with a horizon of 10 to 12 years, the second being performance. On the second item we work only with professional owners and managers who share our views on quality and economic and operational performance. I regard DNV as a classification society with high standards regarding quality and integrity, and almost all the vessels in our fleet are to DNV class,” says Salamon.
When asked about the toughest competition, Salamon highlights those who are only in the market for short-term gains. “There are shipowners who approach us with three-year horizons on plans and those owners will not fit into our company.”
The list of Dr. Peters’ owners and operators with DS-Fund vessels is long and includes many well known shipping names such as Frontline, Teekay and Stena.
“The current boom in shipping rates in most segments is fuelled mostly by the great demand in China for imports of steel, iron ore and oil, with finished goods going back out. The growth in the Chinese economy was 8.8% in 2003 and I see a rather bright future for shipping over the next year,” concludes Salamon. Sitting on top of one of the most dyna-mic investment houses in the world, he should know.

Magne.A.Roe@dnv.com

Date: 12 February 2008