Capital Markets Day of Euronav and CMB.TECH. We start with the forward-looking statements. Today's presentation is based on information available today, Friday, January 12, 2024, and not on any future date. This presentation is available on the Euronav website and will also be filed on Form 6-K with SEC later today. The event is being recorded, and a video and transcript will be available on the Euronav website later today. This presentation contains forward-looking statements, including statements about our beliefs and expectations regarding the proposed transaction between Euronav and CMB.TECH and the potential benefits of that transaction. By their nature, forward-looking statements reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. Actual events and results will differ from these expectations, perhaps materially, and neither Euronav nor CMB.TECH undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.
You will find the complete details of the forward-looking statements on this slide. CMB NV, the parent company of CMB.TECH, is expected to launch a tender offer for the outstanding ordinary shares of Euronav. This presentation is separate from any takeover bid and is neither an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to purchase securities. During the presentation, everyone is on mute. You can ask your questions at the end of this session. I will now hand the floor to Alexander to start the Capital Markets Day.
Yeah. Dear valued shareholders of Euronav NV, dear analysts, dear journalists, dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Euronav's Capital Markets Day. We have organized this event to provide you more information about the recently announced acquisition of CMB.TECH. We will dive more into details and numbers as the morning proceeds, hoping to provide you all the necessary facts and figures to properly understand what this transaction entails. A lot has been said and written about CMB, CMB.TECH, and Euronav in the past 18 months. The content ranged from relatively accurate to totally off the mark. We understand it has been difficult to assess what a new diversification and decarbonization strategy for Euronav means without having access to more information.
I will not dwell on the reasons why we could not provide you with this information, because this would involve too much lawyer talk, and we had enough of that over the past months. But here we are, and we are very happy to elaborate more about what Euronav and CMB.TECH will be about. Let me answer some important questions before we begin. Why did we not believe in a merger with Frontline? Why do we not believe in a standalone, pure-play crude oil tanker company? It's actually quite simple: value creation. We believe that the diversified shipping group, with a strong focus on decarbonization, will create more value than a pure-play tanker company. This does not mean we will exit the tanker markets. We still see opportunities there, but not as a pure-play.
Why don't we pay out the full proceeds of the sale of the 24 VLCCs as dividends? The answer there again is value creation. We believe that we will create more value by reinvesting this money rather than just paying a huge dividend. This does not mean we are against dividends. We see dividends as a value creator, but not the only value creator. Why did we fast-track the CMB.TECH acquisition before the opening of the mandatory bid for Euronav? Create clarity. Clarity about what we do with the $2.35 billion of cash we received through the 24 VLCCs. Clarity about what diversification and decarbonization means in reality, with real ships, real projects, and real cash flows. And clarity about the way we want to create value in the years to come. Is the bid price and the mandatory takeover bid for Euronav fair? Yes.
Is it overly generous? No. The bid is mandatory. We do it because the law says so. We have said on many occasions that we want to remain listed in Brussels and New York. This being said, the bid has the tremendous advantage of offering all of you an exit at a decade-high price, should you want to sell your shares. Is the acquisition price for CMB.TECH fair? Yes. Is it overly generous to CMB, or in other words, is CMB selling at the top of the market and all the Euronav minority shareholders doing a bad deal? No. We have already disclosed, and will disclose more in detail today, how the CMB.TECH valuation has come about and what this means in terms of earnings potential in the coming years.
You will see that this acquisition offers an enormous value creation potential, and we believe Euronav did a good deal. Ladies and gentlemen, after today, you should ask yourself one question: Do I believe in what the Euronav and CMB.TECH team is telling me today? Do I believe that holding a stock of a company that is a reference green shipping stock will create more value than continuing to be a company dependent 100% on the transport of crude oil?... If the answer is no, you can sell today, tomorrow, or you can sell us your shares in March when the bid ends. If the answer is yes, I gladly welcome you to take a front seat on board of our big fleet of ships, destination zero carbon shipping.
I do not promise only calm seas all along this maritime adventure, but I do guarantee you that your captain and crew will do everything in their power to steer you safely and our armada through the energy transition and fascinating markets with one goal and one goal only: creating full value for everyone on board. And with this being said, let's get started. I can see the slide on my screen, but I don't think it's on the big screen. People in the room have the presentation on paper, so people that are dialing digitally can see the presentation. The presentation is split in four parts. I will first talk to you about the CMB.TECH acquisition and remind you of the major aspects of that acquisition.
I will then move into the creation of the reference and sustainable shipping, which is the new CMB.TECH that we envisage. My brother, Ludovic, will take you through the value creation and the value proposal we have with CMB.TECH and with Euronav, and we will then focus on the various business units and markets, which will be presented by my colleagues who are experts in the field. I would like to start with the CMB.TECH transaction. Before I speak about CMB.TECH, I would like to give you an overview of Euronav after the sale of the 24 VLCCs. After the sale of the 24 VLCCs to Frontline, Euronav is the world's second largest independent quoted crude oil tanker company, engaged in the transportation and storage of crude oil. Now people in the room can also see the presentation.
Sustainability in Euronav is a core value, has been a core value, and will continue to be a core value. There is a clear strategy to rejuvenate the fleet and have a future-proof newbuilding program, which we have recently initiated. That will be at the core of our long-term value creation strategy. Our fleet today, as you can see on the right side, is 17 VLCCs on the water, with 3 newbuildings on order that will be powered by ammonia. Our Suezmaxes is 22 ships on the water with another 4 on order. The average age of our fleet is 10 years for the VLCCs and a bit less than 8 years for the Suezmaxes. Last but not least, we also have our 2 FSOs, which are operating in Qatar.
Over the past years, we have returned $1.5 billion in dividends, and we've had a share buyback program of $200 million. We are listed in New York and in Brussels, with a market cap around $3.5 billion. At the bottom right of the slide, you can see that with 14,000 open days, a variation of $5,000, for instance, has a direct impact on our EBITDA of $70 million. CMB.TECH, the company we would like to acquire. CMB.TECH today is a company which is split in four divisions. There's a Marine Division , which is by far the largest part of the group. It is split up in a bulk carrier division, Bocimar, with vessels powered by ammonia. A chemical tanker division, Bochem, with chemical tankers powered by ammonia. A container division with container vessels powered by ammonia.
We also have an offshore wind supply division called Windcat, operating two ship types, crew transfer vessels, which are relatively small and bring people from the shore to the offshore wind parks, and then much larger CSOVs, which are larger people carriers that go further offshore. And last but not least, we also own one tugboat and two ferries. That Marine Division designs, builds, and operates a future-proof fleet powered by hydrogen and ammonia, and it is supported by two business units: H2 Infra, which is producing hydrogen and ammonia molecules and sourcing these molecules from third parties so that we can offer it to our customers. Technology and Development, our center of engineers, which are developing the engines and bringing it on board with our vessels.
Technology we use on board of our ships can also be used on land in heavy industrial applications, and these assets sit in our Industry Division. When you zoom in on the fleet of CMB.TECH today, it's 60 ships on the water and 46 new buildings. Split in the various divisions, as you can see, 62 vessels in offshore wind, 28 in dry bulk, 8 chemical tankers, 5 container vessels, and 3 others. Roughly 50% is still powered by diesel. These are mainly our CTVs, and all the rest is either powered by ammonia or by hydrogen. Euronav has made an agreement with CMB to acquire CMB.TECH for an equity value of $1.15 billion. The fair market value of CMB.TECH enterprise value is $3.649 billion.
The bridge between the enterprise value and the equity value is $2.5 billion in debt, of which $500 million has already been drawn, and $2 billion are installments we need to pay to the shipyards. Out of this $2 billion, $1.6 billion has already been secured with banks, and $360 million still will need to come out of the Euronav cash. How do we want to pay the $1.15 billion equity and the $360 million that will come from the proceeds of the sale of the VLCCs to Frontline? My brother, Ludovic, will zoom in later on the detailed valuation of the various divisions.
If the CMB.TECH acquisition is approved on the Special General Meeting on the seventh of February, what we will create is a combination of two entities, with on the left, Euronav, which is a best-in-class tanker platform with a high-quality base of VLCCs, Suezmaxes, and FSOs. A very strong customer portfolio. All our Euronav customers are at the center of the energy transition. Combined with on the right, the current CMB.TECH, which is a market leader in green ships, has a modern fleet of over 100 low-carbon, future-proof vessels and is operating an integrated hydrogen and ammonia value chain. Bringing this together, it is our aim to create the new CMB.TECH, the reference in sustainable shipping, creating value through a diversified fleet and a strong focus on decarbonization. We will use, produce, distribute, and in the medium run, transport and carry low-carbon fuels.
We believe we can be the only investable, diversified green shipping platform for ESG funds and investors, and we continue, that's at least our intention, to be listed in Brussels and in New York under the new ticker symbol, CMBT. The fair market value of our fleet is around $7 billion. I wanted to highlight as well the next steps and the little steps that have been taken, or the big steps that have been taken recently. The ninth of October, we struck a deal with Mr. Fredriksen to acquire his shares in Euronav and to sell 24 VLCCs. This agreement was approved by the special general meeting in November. One month later, we have announced the acquisition by CMB.TECH, subject to a special general meeting of shareholders, which will take place on the seventh of February.
After the seventh of February, the next milestone is the opening of the mandatory takeover bid on Euronav, probably on the fourteenth of February, and then we hope to close this by the fifteenth of March. I would now like to move on to how we see the future for the new CMB.TECH. There I have a small disclaimer that I need to read to you, which is that Euronav will propose to its shareholders to change its corporate name to CMB.TECH NV, and CMB.TECH will also change its corporate name. The trading symbol for the renamed company will also be changed to CMBT on both NYSE and Belgian Euronext. Further reference in the presentation and today to CMB.TECH is forward-looking and describes the situation after the renaming from Euronav to CMB.TECH. Further reference to Euronav will be as the crude oil tanker division of CMB.TECH.
This being said, let me take you through the following slides. The new CMB.TECH, CMBT, has a strong, experienced management team. First and foremost, your presenter of today, myself, as the CEO of the company. We have a very good CFO, my brother, Ludovic; excellent Chief Commercial Officer, Maxime Van Eecke; my brother Michael is the Chief Chartering Officer; and Benoit Timmermans is the Chief Strategy Officer. The five of us represent the management board of Euronav and will, if the transaction is approved on the seventh of February, represent the new management board of CMBT. But we are not alone. We have a fantastic management team which is supporting us on the day-to-day, and there are many more people that we could put on this slide, which are driving our vision and our strategy. I'd like to talk a little bit about the history of Euronav and CMB.
In 1991, our family stepped into CMB as a controlling shareholder. In 1995, we co-founded Euronav together with CMB. In 1997, Euronav became the 100% owned tanker division of CMB. A couple of years later, in 2004, our ways split. We spun off Euronav as a separate listed company on the Brussels Stock Exchange. What you can see on the slide is a story of value creation by two companies, which is coming together after all these years in 2023. CMB, during all that time, has focused on diversifying its fleet and has clearly focused us from 2015 and 2016 on decarbonizing its fleet. Euronav, on the other hand, has grown its fleet and has become the largest independent tanker owner during all these years. We are now in 2023. We have announced the acquisition of CMB.TECH.
Again, if it is approved at the next special general meeting, these two stories will come together again in one large investable company. What do we stand for? We want to be the global reference in sustainable shipping. That means four things. First and foremost, we create value with a diverse, sustainable, and high-quality asset base and cash flows. We reward our shareholders. Secondly, CMB.TECH focuses on hydrogen for small ships, ammonia for large ships. We power green marine value chains, shipping assets, port assets, hydrogen and ammonia production infrastructure. Thirdly, we attract and inspire the best talents. And last but not least, we want to serve our customers with the best, most reliable, and safe services. Our customers who are at the center of the energy transition.
This slide you will recognize, is of course, based on the current CMB.TECH, but with the big addition of the Euronav platform. New CMB.TECH will have four divisions: the large Marine Division , which I already highlighted to you, but with the addition of a very strong tanker platform, supported by H2 Infra, supported by Technology and Development, and very much active as well on the land-based, heavy industrial applications. It's a fleet on the water of 101 ships, with 53 new buildings in the pipeline. Average age of 4.6 years across the fleet. As you can see, still two-thirds of the fleet, mainly the tankers of Euronav and the CTVs, that are all powered by diesel, but a third already in the pipeline to be powered by ammonia and hydrogen.
Our business model is designed to enable the gray-to-green transition of the maritime industry. We have a focus on hydrogen for small ships, ammonia for large ships, and we want to create value for our shareholders with reliable, qualitative, and safe services, and of course, attract the best talents. This slide shows you a bit more detail about the various large Marine Division s. I will not dwell too long on it, but I think it's important to highlight the fair market value of the fleet, which is very large, close to $7 billion. We have 154 vessels, with more than 3,000 seafarers, 450 shore-based staff, and we have 70 engineers with more than 15 years of experience in the development of low-carbon engines.
The flywheel strategy of CMB.TECH, or the CMB.TECH Marine Division, is a combination of our fleet and the production of molecules. We start by having a fleet that can use hydrogen and ammonia: Windcat, Bocimar, Bochem, Delphis, Euronav. By the fact that these ships have hydrogen and ammonia engines, they are enabling the production of hydrogen and ammonia. Production that we will do ourselves, production that will be done by third parties. And the more these third parties produce the molecules, the more we will be able to use them on board of our fleet and strengthen the rollout of our future-proof assets. It's an integration across the entire value chain in sustainable shipping, hydrogen and ammonia. It's diversified cash flows, which allow us to invest throughout the shipping cycles, and we will capitalize on the fleet size and the strategic investments we have in infrastructure.
All in all, it's the transportation of goods, something we have been doing for a long time, but with low-carbon solutions. We have added this slide to show to all of you that these are not just renders. The fleets are hitting the water. I've just come back yesterday from China, where we took delivery of 1 more container vessel and 2 more Newcastlemaxes. You can see the pictures there. We already have 2 chemical tankers on the water, and there's 4 more coming this year. We have the Hydrotug, which was launched just before Christmas, and many, many more vessels that will come into the fleet this year. We will show you the amount of open days that we already have in 2024 to show you that the cash flows are not coming in 5 years from now, but will actually come already very soon.
CMB.TECH on NYSE and Euronext wants to be a growth stock. A growth stock based on three things. First, a long-term trend and structural shift towards low-carbon solutions. Second, the competitive advantage we believe we have at CMB.TECH to offer solutions to our customers, to give an answer to our customers who are faced with these new regulations. And last but not least, there's more than 100,000 commercial vessels on the water in the world. The addressable market we have is huge. So with this combination of this long-term trend, our expertise, and a large addressable market, we believe in growth, and we believe CMB.TECH will be a growth stock. About these regulations, everybody knows the EU regulations, the Green Deal, the Fit for 55, the EU ETS, the Fuel EU Maritime Directive. But let's not forget, the rest of the world is there as well.
The IMO, this summer, 2023, has sharpened the CO2 targets for shipping. These limits will come. China, just come back from there, is also having, in their five-year plans, a very clear target on low-carbon industry and specifically low-carbon shipping. Many regional initiatives will come, and this is why we believe, and in the next five years, we could deploy $3 billion-$5 billion of investment in future-proof assets, green marine hydrogen assets, green marine ammonia assets. And I want to give you an example. You will see on this slide some calculations, and please read it at your leisure, but I would like to take you to the essence. In the EU, since January 1 of this year, there's the EU ETS.
EU ETS means for ships that are calling European ports, you will have to pay for your CO₂ emissions, just like the cement industry or the steel industry already does since a long time. It's a tax which is roughly $90 per ton of CO₂, which is going to increase the costs of burning diesel on board of our ships. 100% of the CO₂ emissions for ships that trade within Europe, 50% of the CO₂ emissions for vessels that come from outside of the EU and call at EU ports. But there's more. On the first of January, 2025, the Fuel EU Maritime Directive will come into play. That directive will gradually lower the amount of CO₂ a ship can emit per energy unit. What does this mean?
This means that, for instance, as from 2030, if you operate 10 large container vessels and you continue to burn diesel, you will be faced with an extra bill per year of EUR 30 million-EUR 50 million spread out over these 10 ships. This is only 2030-2035. As from 2035, the rules become even more stringent. Huge penalties if you continue to burn diesel. Adding just one ship, as you can see on the slide, which is powered by ammonia, could bring that bill down to zero. Now, obviously, the clean fuels are more expensive, so this is not a saving of EUR 30 million-EUR 50 million straight to the bottom line. If we are very conservative, we will probably keep 10%-15% of that saving. But then comes 2035, then comes 2040, and then it's going to accelerate.
I want to show you here that actually it already makes sense today to invest in future proof ships. The benefits will come because the regulations in the EU are already there and will be emulated, as I said before, in other regions of this world. Talking about an addressable market is talking about a number of ships, but it is also talking about customers. People always ask me, "Do your customers pay to be green?" I have to be honest, 80% of our customers want to be green, but they don't want to pay for it. But thankfully, as you can see on this slide, we are engaging with a lot of customers that are willing to co-invest and to partner with us into these low carbon solutions, and we believe this will only accelerate. The addressable market and the amount of customers is huge.
My last slide is to talk about growth. What we have put on this slide is discussions we are having today with customers, is plans and designs that we have in the pipeline. On the marine hydrogen-powered, we have plans to roll out a series of tugboats, a series of Hydrocats or CTVs, more CSOVs powered by hydrogen, and we want to extend our series of mini bulkers, of which we have 2 today, even further. On the ammonia side, we have exciting developments and exciting designs on Ultramax and Kamsarmax bulkers powered by ammonia. We are working on mid-size container vessels powered by ammonia. We are looking at Aframaxes and LR2s tankers powered by ammonia, and we would like to extend our series of chemical tankers, 25,000, powered by ammonia. On the H2 infra, we have a large project in Namibia.
We will discuss this later on in the presentation, where we want to produce close to 200,000 tons of ammonia annually. We're also working on offtake agreements. Two large offtake agreements in the U.S., one in Europe, and we have one specific green hydrogen offtake agreement we are working on in Europe. As you can see, our pipeline is big, the addressable market is big, and our customers want to engage with us on this. I would now like to pass on the word to my brother, Ludovic, who will talk to you about the value creation.
Good morning, everybody. My name is Ludovic Saverys. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Euronav. As Alex mentioned in the nice introduction, where we're coming from. Today, I'm gonna zoom in a little bit more on valuation of the deal, but then also value creation of the combined platform. Valuation. This slide you have seen, Euronav is buying 100% of the shares of CMB.TECH NV for $1.15 billion in cash. If you try to make the bridge from what is the whole company CMB.TECH worth, and then drill down into the liability it has, and yes, it's. We've made a valuation internally, together with our financial advisors, KBC, Société Générale, and Crédit Agricole , on the four divisions.
The Marine Division , by far the largest, obviously, we have done the typical net asset value calculation on the fair market value on the different segments: the dry bulk, containers, chemicals, offshore winds, Marine Science. The two others were the industry, which are the land-based application powered by low carbon solutions, and the H2 Infra, which is the sourcing and the production of the green molecules. Last but not least, the Technology and Development Center is more a cost center, but has been looked at. The three latter parts, we've done a discounted cash flow, which I will go further into detail. That all together brings the enterprise value of CMB.TECH to about $3.65 billion. We've talked about the cash price being paid, $1.15 in cash coming from the proceeds of the sale of the VLCCs.
But more importantly, the $2.5 billion liabilities that will be rolled over. $0.5 billion is existing debt, existing debt from vessels on the water, existing debt on pre-delivery finance for some new buildings. The remaining $2 billion in capital commitments, a lot of analysts have asked the question, what is the capital outflow in the coming years? Well, in the next 3-3.5 years, Euronav now, the combined CMB.TECH, will pay another $2 billion to the yards. Of that $2 billion, $1.6 billion has already been secured. Whether it's European banks, Chinese banks, Chinese leasing, these have been secured already, signed and sealed, and will be rolled over to the new CMB.TECH company.
The remaining part, $3.6, $361 million, will obviously come from the remaining cash in Euronav after the sale of the fleet of Frontline. Zooming in on the net asset value methodology we've done on the marine assets. On this slide, there's a lot of numbers, a lot of interesting numbers for the readers and the investors, because it details, 1, the methodology, and then 2, per vessel, what is the fair market value we have put these vessels in. Methodology, we've tried to keep it as objective as possible, and so we've used broker valuations. Broker valuation, you probably know, like Fearnleys, Clarksons, Vessels Value, and others, that we have used to make an average of these 2 broker valuation.
And as an example, on the Newcastlemaxes, which is probably by far the largest parts of the fair market value, we come around these newbuildings and vessels on the water, around $72 million per vessel. Some of these vessels on the container side and the chemical tanks already have long-term contracts, 10-year contracts. These have then been valued, same by the brokers, what that value is compared to what the current market is. This has been added to the valuation of the company. Continuing to the industry parts. Industry and H2 Infra is a little bit more difficult to value, because there is not just an independent valuator that makes a standard valuation, so we've done a business plan. A business plan over 20 years, where basically management has made assumptions on how that company will grow.
Together with our financial advisors, to zoom in on the industry sides, where, as my colleagues will explain later, we focus on the building and selling or leasing of trucks, generators on hydrogen, port equipment, these are straddle carriers, the reach stackers, RoRo tractors, BeHydro, which is our joint venture in Belgium, where we build medium-speed hydrogen engines, monofuel and dual -fuel, and then the locomotives, which is a small division. As an example on this slide, you can see in 2024, we expect to sell 75 dual-fuel hydrogen trucks. Some of them have been announced already with Van Moer, others are in the pipeline, and these are being built here in Antwerp, and sold, worldwide.
The generators, for instance, this is a relatively small amount, 10 generators this year, together with our partnership with E-Power, which will ramp up to 2026 to 36 generators. As you probably can see on total revenue, by 2026, these are relatively small amounts. $60 million turnover on an EBITDA of $30 million, compared to the large cash-generating and profit-generating capacity of the marine site, this is relatively small. Nevertheless, we've then put this in the model where you take assumptions, obviously, it's a business plan, on perpetual growth rates, weighted average cost of capital to be able to discount all that cash flow, and we've come to a valuation of $181 million enterprise value. As there's no debt in there, that's also the equity value.
We've made a sensitivity on the bottom right, where, obviously, together with our financial advisors, we've tested what if the WACC was different, what if the perpetual growth rate was different? And we can still see that, we've chosen the middle part. On the H2 Infra, that is, probably even a harder task because on the one hand, we have our, existing activities on the production of hydrogen here in Antwerp. We're building a smaller pilot plant, in Namibia, and then there's a very large-scale project, which, my colleagues will explain, with about $2.5 billion-$3 billion of CapEx, where we will be a smaller shareholder, but a driving shareholder, but there where the decision has not been taken yet. We have to put some probabilities on the, execution of that whole plan.
And there, after all the discounts, with the various assumption on the WACC and the perpetual growth, we've come to a valuation of about $90 million of enterprise value, which also is the equity value. These are all plans of the future. We've also tested with our financial advisors, what other companies in the market are there that have similar plans that are probably public listed? And there, there have been multiple examples of $200 million-$500 million of market cap on companies that have plans that are much smaller than ours. So we feel very comfortable on that valuation.
As CMB is seen as a related party to Euronav, in the whole transaction, we have taken an independent advisor, Degroof Petercam , that together with the independent directors of Euronav, has looked and tested whether the price, $1.15 billion equity that we've discussed, is a fair price. There's been a very long report, which we have published on the Euronav websites, where the independent directors have also done a positive advice on that transaction, where we're trying to show on this slide the difference in valuation between both. Our value was $1.15. The Degroof Petercam , the independent advisor, came to $1.3 billion, and we actually see that on the enterprise value, we almost match one-on-one, with a very small difference, the enterprise value of the company.
The big difference here, as you can read on the right side, is that the independent directors and their advisor have discounted the future $2 billion of CapEx. And obviously, in a high interest rate environment, there's something to be said about that, because we get an interest rate-free, delivery installments. We do not have to pay interest on the capital installments we have in the coming, years. Nevertheless, we've kept the lower brackets of this valuation. On this slide, you can see that the independent directors have, together with their advisor, tested their valuation, whether it was discounted cash flow, whether it was NAV, whether it was multiples on, comparables. And they've put a, a sensitivity where the purchase price is still on the lower brackets of the various, tests.
Some analysts and the media reports have asked questions on the hints that previous management of Euronav has done on the valuation of the $720 million of CMB.TECH back in Q4 2021 and today. Now, the company was dramatically different. The market backdrop was dramatically different. In 2021, there was a big hype on energy stocks, hydrogen stocks, and so we show on this slide a snapshot. On the top side, on the Marine Division , we had 40 vessels, 47 vessels on the water and 30 vessels on order for $1.8 billion. Now, obviously, today, in a transaction, it's much, much, much larger, and there's been a, a huge, asset depreciation also on the vessels back then. On the H2 Infra and industry, in about 2 years, we ramped up the prototype.
We ramped up the production facilities, on the H2 Infra, but also the business pipeline quite dramatically, as on this slide, you can see a couple of the examples. Coming to the second part, value creation. So valuation was, on the one hand, on the transaction, now we're looking forward. We're a listed company with a long-term shareholder. I think we are, as a shareholder, perfectly incentivized, together to lead this to create value. But we also look at the clients. On the top side, you can see why we think we want to create value for the clients and then for the investors, the shareholders, us, but also the existing ones and potentially the new ones we're going to attract. For our clients, it's core to our business. We're in a service, business where we own assets.
We're a, an asset-intensive business, where we build... We try to think about what assets our clients want and try to bring to them something that they will use, which in return will get predictable cash flows. The goal of CMB.TECH new company is obviously to get access to long-term cash flows. Coming back to the valuation, a lot of shipping companies are valued at an NAV basis, which is a liquidated value. I think it doesn't give a lot of credit and merits for long-term businesses that an investor tried to create value by saying we're just in liquidation. So obviously, we want to try to show more predictable cash flow so people can start valuing the company on a multiple of EBITDA back to the enterprise value. The long-term contracts with blue-chip counterparties obviously increase the creditworthiness of those cash flows.
And where we definitely want, together with them, and we will show in some examples on the Newcastlemaxes on the container vessels, we're trying to share the risk, but also the rewards together with our clients, where we can give them their ways of reducing their Scope 3 emissions as a third bullet point. Basically, we give the tools to our customers. In the various Marine Division s, we try to give future-proof vessels that our customers can use to have their own decarbonization trajectory. Investors. Still today, $3.5 billion market cap, dual listing, liquid stock. This is a perfect platform to attract investors. They have a very hard focus on ESG, and we dare to say it is real ESG. It is not just boardroom hype.
We're getting down to the assets and putting them on the water to show the world that we can actually decarbonize already from today. We want to give a platform where people can invest. It is not easy today in various companies to have a very focus on a real energy transition. A real one, because there's cash flow on the water. A real one, because we're not afraid of using cash flows from older assets, older generation assets, tankers, dry bulk vessels, but at least that can fuel that transition, because today there is a big need of equity deployment to get real energy transition going on. So use cash flows from the old money to fund the new. And then eventually, because of the long-term reference shareholder, try to attract a breed of long-term investors.
People can step in and out of the stock, obviously, but getting a long-term view is gonna be critical if we want to ride this wave of energy transition. Now, here we're coming to one of my favorite slides. The next three slides will try to hint it. There's a lot of numbers on there. On the marine side, what is our earnings capacity? And earnings capacity on these various assets, it's about P&L break-evens, and it's about the market. You combine that together with the open days that Alex has mentioned already, and it's relatively easy for one to make its own assessment on what the cash generation measures can be and the profit-generating measures.
As an example here, the Newcastlemax carrier will have $22,000 per day P&L break-even, with an OpEx around $6,400, where actually, vessels on the water, we were earning in Q4, actual numbers, roughly $30,000. This, as an example, the Newcastlemax today are making money. And you can see throughout the various divisions, on the CMB.TECH, divisions, the container vessels are making money. Chemical tankers, very interesting. CSOVs are probably the only one here, which is not hitting the water yet. But if we look at the forecast of time charter earnings, for 2024, you can see that the P&L break-even of $32,000 on a CSOV will be delivered already would be making money. The bottom slides is back to the tanker business. These are figures that obviously we are publishing every quarter.
But just to give an example on the VLCC spot today, P&L breakeven of $26,000 earning actual, well, it's an estimate, but we're close to actual of $40,000. Suezmax is $42,000. So again, on the existing fleets and on the low P&L breakevens, we believe we have an interesting story today. We've then taken the analyst consensus on what the future market is. Obviously, everyone needs to make his own assessments, but we've plugged in analyst consensus or actual contracts we have. For instance, on the chemical tankers and containers, we have 10-year contracts, which are fixed, so there the calculation is relatively easy, and we can still see a very nice, profits generating margin here on all the future cash flow that might come.
Available days is probably the most important for people making their assessments on the cash flow generation, the profit generation in Euronav. We have by 2026 a total amount of days of $30,000. Thirty thousand open days, sorry. Every thousand dollars is $30 million. We don't have to wait until 2026. In 2024, we already have a big amount of vessels on the water. As you can see on the Newcastlemax, that's already 2,200 days. The 6,000 TEU container vessels, already 1,000 days. These are vessels that are making money today and will contribute to the bottom line of CMBT. The VLCC and Suezmax, you know, but for us, this shows that we're not having to wait for low-carbon cash flow in 5, 10 years, but actually it's happening today.
On this slide, we've made an illustrative balance sheet. So this is pure company calculation on combining at closing of a transaction, fifteenth of February, combining Euronav projected balance sheets and CMBT projected balance sheets, to then combine it. By Q1 figures, when we publish those in May, you will have much more revised figures, but this is already an illustrative balance sheet. Important to show here, there's been a lot of questions about goodwill, because obviously there's been a big uplift in value from CMBT back to the purchase price. We've chosen, together with our auditors, to not revalue the assets on the marine side, so we keep them at book value. The goodwill that has been taken, has been taken out of the equity, so that's the $780 million that you see.
We've not taken any goodwill, and we will not take in the coming quarters. Coming back to the timeline, you see here, a NAV per share has been calculated at $18.43. We've then passed the various hurdles to get to today, where the bid price that we'll offer from fifteenth of February on until fifteenth of March to all the existing shareholders will be $17.86. But we believe that this will be an interesting entry opportunity for the existing investors to stay in or the new investors, obviously, to take part of this predicted upside. We've touched upon it. We are a diversified fleet. There is obviously a choice of a shipping company to be a pure play. We've chosen to be a different one, and for two reasons.
If you look on the bottom left, there is obviously the various cycles that we believe the various markets are in. Having a diversified fleet gives you the opportunity for a company to take the cash flows from sales, from operations at the higher cycle, like tankers, to reinvest in divisions that are more lower cycle. You try to recycle your cash to be able to serve from wave to wave, from trough to peak. On top of that, we do believe that there will be a difference for assets that are low carbon and conventionally fueled in the years to come, that will give an opportunity to earn more and better long-term cash flows compared to a gray fleet. Last but not least, we've talked about energy transition.
There is a big focus on ESG from the investors, and more and more, there's investors that can only invest in certain types of companies that have a very strong view on energy transition, but also are forced to. And so for us, it is definitely important to hit that flow of investors and try to convince them to buy stock in Euronav. To end my part, we repeat our value proposition for the investors. We give access to an energy transition-focused, large liquid stock. We focus on long-term value creation, diversified fleets.
Tier one clients, as Alex mentioned, a lot of people think about ESG, think about energy transition, not many of them really want to pay for it, but there is a good amount of people that want to do it, and these are often tier one clients, investment-grade clients, which helps the credits portion, obviously, of CMBT. We're top-ranked by tier one ESG rating agency, as you can see on the bottom. We have been three consecutive years B rating on the CDP. We think it's an interesting valuation points, and we have a strong anchor shareholders to try to navigate the energy transition. I thank you for that, and I will now pass on to Joris Daman to talk about the tanker markets.
Good morning, everybody. Happy to kick off the first business units and market segment. My name is Joris Daman. I'm Head of Investor Relations and ESG of the new CMB.TECH entity. So I have three slides. On the first slide, I wanted to clarify a bit what is the role of Euronav as a BU segment, a crude oil transportation company in CMB.TECH? CMB.TECH being the future reference in sustainable shipping. How does that match, and how can Euronav support a swift, just, and equitable transition? These were the key outcomes, the key aims of the COP28 United Nations Climate Conference, and we are in full support there, which was also marked as the beginning of the end of the fossil fuels. So on your left-hand side, we have the oil demand scenarios. These are three scenarios.
It's an average of several studies that are available out there in the market, where we have the New Momentum. So after the Ukraine, Russia conflict, there was a New Momentum whereby energy security, energy affordability became more important and energy transition a bit less. We have the Accelerated scenario. Accelerated being all the pledges that are taken by governments, by authorities, that they would really become action. And then we have a third scenario, and that's called the Net Zero scenario. And the Net Zero scenario is, first of all, aligned with the 1.5 degrees Paris Climate Agreement, but also with the revised IMO greenhouse gas strategy of last year. And that's really key because we are a shipping company, and we want to be the reference in green shipping.
It's aiming to be net zero by 2050, but you see that there is still a, a 27 million barrels of global, oil demand on an annual basis that's offset by carbon capture. So there will always be a certain demand for oil products in the foreseeable future. If you look at the right-hand graph, we made a translation of the scenario, so CMBT being the reference in sustainable shipping, what would that imply for the VLCC tonnage that would be required? So taking the assumption that today we have roughly 900 VLCCs, we have kept the split between Suezmaxes and VLCCs equal, the split between pipeline and, shipped also equal, ton miles equal.
So there are a lot of assumptions, but it's the main message here that we would require today, roughly 900 VLCCs, and it will decline year -on- year by 5.5%, up until roughly 200 VLCCs by 2050. That's what we require. Then we added on top of that, okay, what are the amount of VLCCs that we have today? What's the order book? So we have the blue graph, and the blue graph shows, imagine that no new build orders would be there in the foreseeable future. The red graph shows, imagine that we gradually ramp up again, the new build orders to, on average, 25 per annum.
What's really interesting in this graph is that by supporting a net zero situation, there is still a big requirement for VLCCs, and that the requirement of VLCCs is bigger than the available tonnage, even in a situation where we would build 25 VLCCs on an annual basis. Really reinforcing that there is a place for a company like Euronav in an energy transition company. Really great to green energy transition. Main reason that you see that let's say, the gap is becoming bigger in the coming years, is that there was a big supply of VLCC tonnage between 2006 and 2011, and those ships are gradually becoming 15, 16, up to 20 years, and by that time, we either recycle them or they leave legal trade.
That's a second key takeaway, and then the third one, the tipping point. For me, the tipping point is not the moment where the red line crosses the green line, but is already earlier, because asset value will have a forward-looking appreciation of the market, so it will start earlier, around 2035, 2030, 2040. This is a rough, rough order magnitude estimation, but it shows the strategy why Euronav as a business unit has still a place within the CMB diversified clean tech shipping division. Now, the market is good. It seems that for the foreseeable future, the market will remain good. Why are you then sharing a strategy of recycling older tonnage to reinvest? There's two main reasons for it.
On the left-hand side, you see the 10-year-old tanker asset value in millions, where we speak today of an all-time high, taking not into consideration the 2004, 2008, super cycle. So today, the assets are at an all-time high in regard of asset valuation. So that means it's a good time to rethink about the asset strategy that you have. We take a forward-looking view at the market, and that's the right-hand graph, whereby we see a gradual ramp up in the beginning of EU ETS. We add to that Fuel EU, but we will also have IMO regulation because they have created the greenhouse gas revised strategy. They want to get to 2050 net zero situation, so they will also come with a global fuel levy.
There will be additional legislation, conventions, be put in place over the next decade, and that will have an impact on the competitiveness of older ships, conventional ships. That's what we show in the right-hand graph. There, the main aim is that we do not want to wait to gradually reduce our fleet by each time waiting until they are 20, to recycle or to replace. We want to prepone that. We want to recycle our conventional fleet, our older conventional fleets, and build up a future-proof fleet. That's the, let's say, the green arrow in the bottom, whereby we're gradually building up future-proof tonnage that will not be impacted by the upcoming legislation. Because, for example, the order, the three Vs-...
Dual -fuel ammonia will not be impacted by the upcoming legislation because they have low carbon fuels. Those two slides were about, okay, why do we fit into CMBT as a business unit? What's our strategy in regard of recycling? This provides a bit an overview. The overview was already shared in the beginning, and it's very well known in the market, but we are today still the second largest publicly listed crude oil platform. So if you want exposure in crude oil, if you want exposure in the next crude oil super cycle, Euronav is still the place to be as a business unit under the CMBT umbrella. We have 17 VLCCs on the water, 22 Suezmaxes, our two FSOs. 75% of our revenue is spot, 25%, roughly under long-term contracts, where we have two VLs.
Under a long-term contract, we have our Suezmaxes, 5 Suezmaxes, under time charter contract with revenue sharing. Then we have the 2 FSOs under contract until 2032. If you look at the markets, this is very well known. There are two major items to be stressed here. 2024, we will hit a new peak in global oil demand. Roughly 103 million barrels per day is forecasted or estimated to be achieved in 2024. We have the OPEC + production cuts, which are prolonged. However, as a side effect of the production cuts, we know that the Atlantic Basin is more active, and the ton mile has grown in the last six months and is also estimated to grow further in 2024 by 3%. That's the market.
If you look at the order book, we have there today an order book, standing at 3.8%, compared to the fleet up until last week. We had some orders popping up, early this week, but it will not materially change the 3.8. It will maybe become 4.1%. And if we fast-forward two years, so imagine we are in 2026, one-fourth of the fleet will be 20 years or older, meaning that there is a market either for recycling or, leaving, let's say, the legal trade.
If we combine growing ton-mile, growing oil demands, low order book together with increasing regulations, so there will be some slow steaming in the years ahead for the older tonnage, can estimate that the utilization will further increase over the coming period, and that the rates should follow. That's about it from my side.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Saverys. I'm the Chief Chartering Officer of Euronav, and very happy to present to you our views on Bocimar and the new division under CMBT, where we are going to have 26 new Newcastlemaxes and two hydrogen-powered mini bulkers that are going to deliver in the next coming years. As Alex mentioned, he just came back from China. We are delivering two more new Newcastlemaxes in the weeks to come. And the vessels that we're going to deliver in 2024, 2025, and 2026 are going to be industry-ready or industry fitted. Basically, the future-proof fleet with increasing commercial value.
Obviously, as you know, the regulatory landscape is changing very dramatically, and what we are delivering are the most fuel-efficient new Newcastlemaxes and dry bulk vessels on the planet. The... I will come back to you on that in the second slide, where we are going to be showing you the difference between a 2012 Newcastlemax and a 2024 delivered Newcastlemax. Zooming in on the market, I think most of you know that dry bulk generally speaking follows the world GDP. We are expecting dry bulk growth for 2024 to be about 3%. 2023, we had a relatively flat growth in the first- or actually a negative growth in the first six months of the year.
The second half of the year, we saw that we had an increase in the transport of iron ore, bauxite, and grains, which ended in actually a very strong market for Q4 and actually a very strong market that we are expecting for 2024. Other supporting factors, obviously, for the dry bulk segment is that the new regulations means that the older fleet will have to slower their speeds. Slower speeds also means more demand. And just to zoom in now on the order book and utilization. On the supply, that is the most compelling story on dry bulk. Today, we have a current Capesize order book of about 20 million deadweight, and that is only 5% of the Capesize fleet.
But the real big shift that we are going to see in 2024, 2025, 2026 is that the vessels that were built during the boom years of 2008, basically have been delivered in 2009, 10, and 11. With about 70% of the Capesize fleet in 2027 will be 15 years and older. Obviously, by 2030, those ships will be 18 years. What does that mean today? That on the biggest trade lane route, Australia, China, today, these vessels can only be 15 years and younger. So by 2027, 70% of the Capesize fleet, and I think Joris zoomed in on the, on the VLCCs, that we have a quarter of the fleet that is aging very rapidly.
But here on Capesize, we have 70% of the Capesize fleet that will be older than 15 years in 2027, and that will be the year after we deliver the last Newcastlemax. Current trading patterns, we see that only a very, very small amount of vessels are trading 15 years and older in West Australia, but those are still contracts that were contracted back in 2006. So obviously, if all the vessels would be deployed on the West Australia route, as of 2027, it means that the market is very good, and obviously we will benefit from it on our Newcastlemax fleet.
Please zoom in on the fleet profile of the fleet, the right-hand side bottom of the fleet, to have a little bit more information on the numbers I've just given to you. Similar story, the age of the fleet, very old, but obviously with the CII regulations that we have, for the ships that are achieving a D rating for the three consecutive years, or an E rating in a single year, corrective action plan must be developed and authorized and approved by a flag state. What does that mean? Is that we will need to, if you have an older vessel on the water, you need to basically reduce the speed of your vessel further, as your CII rating moves from an A to an E.
With the Newcastlemax that we have on the water, we expect that we will keep an A rating for the next 7-10 years, depending on how many Newcastlemaxes the world is going to order. On the last part of the slide, I'm showing you the consumption of a Newcastlemax, the ones that we have on the water, which is the Mineral Belgium. Then we have the Mineral Qingdao, which is a Newcastlemax that was built in 2020, and Mineral Maureen, which is a Newcastlemax that was built in 2012. We are zooming in on the consumption of these ships for West Australia to China round trip. It's about 35 days. We burn about 1,075 tons on the Mineral Maureen. On the Mineral Belgium, we burn about 700 tons.
We do 10 voyages a year on these vessels. So the savings on the fuel savings on the Mineral Belgium is about 3,250 tons a year, or $2.5 million. And this is the competitive advantage that these vessels have over the rest of the fleet. This is only monetary, but obviously in CO2 savings, the great advantage of our Newcastlemax fleet is that without looking and zooming in on the NH3 capabilities that these vessels will have, is that we have a reduction of Scope 3 emissions of up to 30% compared to the existing fleet that we have. So as I said, the dry bulk fleet has an extremely compelling supply side.
The demand, we know it follows the GDP, so we are looking at fleet utilizations for 2024, 2025, 2026, increased fleet utilizations, and so obviously we are expecting to have very strong markets during these years. Ludovic also zoomed in on the actual performance of the fleet of those two new buildings that we had already on the water. They earned about $30,000 in the first half of 2023 and second half of 2023, with a break-even level of about $22,000. That's it from my side. Thank you. I pass the floor to Benoit Timmermans.
Good morning. My name is Benoit Timmermans. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer, and I think the sequence of the presentation couldn't be better, because we were talking about diversification. I think talking about dry bulk followed by chemical tankers is quite a bit an example of diversification. Not only because we are probably in different points of the cycle, but also because the nature of the business is completely different. Welcome to the fantastic world of chemical tankers. Welcome to the world of the stainless steel. What are we transporting? We are transporting roughly 600 different products on those stainless steel tankers. Those chemicals are the founding bricks of the industry and of consumer markets. It's in our daily lives.
It's medicines, it's paints, it's detergents, it's car parts, it's sponges, it's food, it's oil, it's makeup, it's insulation, it's fertilizers, it's plastic - plastic, fantastic - clothes, rainwear, explosives, food, vaccines, everything in this fantastic world of chemical tankers. We are building 8 stainless steel, 25,000 deadweights. This is the workhorse to come for the industry. Obviously, as already mentioned, those chemical tankers will be future-proof. They will be able to be retrofitted to burn ammonia. Of those 8 ships, 2 are today operating in a spot pool with a famous Norwegian chemical operator. We have committed the next 4 on long term to that same operator. The last 2 ships are unfixed, so we have a fair portion of spot exposure if we so wish.
Now, when I cited all those products which we carry, and we can classify in organic, inorganic, I can go there very long, but that's not important. What you will understand is that the growth of this seaborne trade is even more linked to world GDP than anything else. It's a correlation of 95%. So world GDP growth means growth in seaborne trade. This is the fleet, roughly 3,000 ships, but there's one big distinction, is that some are coated units and some are stainless steel. We are only operating in the stainless steel segment. Stainless steel can take very corrosive specialty products, need special attention, and enables special trades, which are premium trades. Where do we trade? Those are the main flows of commodities.
Needless to say, that out of the U.S., very rich in excess shale gas and excess shale oil, a lot of products can come out of there, whether it's the West Coast or the East Coast. A lot of trade to Europe. Europe to, used to be a net exporter. Lack of investments today, Europe has become a net importer. And then the big activity, of course, in the Far East, with China being a major player, soon to become again, a net exporter. Trade volumes and ton miles developments. There you can see it. It's another expression in the first graph of the correlation between seaborne trade and, amounts, in, world GDP and seaborne trade. What are the compelling elements in this story?
Apart from the fact that those are best in class, as Michael said, also very performant on the water with a lot of features which our competitors do not have. It is the supply-demand outlook. We are facing a potential net fleet decline over the coming years. Little has been ordered. Little is being ordered as we speak. Prices have increased. There's very little yard availability. It's a sophisticated ship to build, so the barriers of entry are fairly high, and we expect growth in seaborne trade. So the compelling story here, once again, is supply, demand. Thank you very much. So I think, there is a little break now.
Dear all, also viewers at home. As mentioned, we will be taking a short break now, and we will be back at 11:30 A.M. May we also remind you that questions will be answered at the Q&A session after all sessions. Thank you, and we will see you back in 15 minutes.
Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon to those dialing in from the Far East. My name is Maxime Van Eecke. I'm the CCO of Euronav, but also the managing director of Delphis. I'll give you a little overview of the container markets and our current container fleet. Before elaborating on the container market fundamentals and our existing fleet, I wanted to explain a little bit what we, Delphis, as a tonnage provider, we stand for. We as Delphis, we are, and we want to continue to be, the reference for high quality container ships with a focus on green technologies. To that effect, our goal is to become the trusted partner for all our customers, their decarbonization journey....
Indeed, despite the challenging container market conditions we're seeing today, there has and there still be the willingness from our customers to take a sort of through the cycle approach and engage with us on long-term projects and long-term discussions. This approach is usually driven by two things. The first one is our track record as a tonnage provider, with the ability to develop state-of-the-art designs, which would give trading flexibility that our customers need in their daily operations. Secondly, is throughout the years, we've built up an expertise in new technologies, where again, we can assist our customers to reduce their carbon emissions in their operations. This is very well reflected in our fleet and the contracts on the ships.
Today, we have 4 6,000 super eco container ships, which we are currently building in China, of which 1 has already been delivered last year, and the rest will be delivered this year. There are certain specifics. These ships are the biggest ice-class container ships in the world, have high reefer capacity, again, providing to the customer all the flexibility to trade these ships around the world. These 4 ships are on charter to CMA, a long-term, 10-year time charter. Aside from that, we have an additional project ship that is a 1,400 TEU container ship, which we've designed ourselves together with NCL and Yara, who we're gonna build and eventually own. And this ship, this ship will be the first class or the first ammonia-fitted container ship in the world. Here again, same principle.
The ship will be operated on a 15-year charter to Yara. NCL will operate in the northern part of Europe. NCL and Yara, they will provide the ammonia to fuel that ship. If we're looking at the market fundamentals, you've probably noticed that the last 2, 3 years, we saw a surge in new building orders. This has led to a staggering new building to fleet ratio of 27%. What does that mean? Well, that actually means that in the next 2 years, we're gonna have 5 million TEU delivered. That means for the first year, 2024, we'll have more than one ship per year, per day delivered.
If one has to put this against demand side, where the IMF expects a globe, the global economy to grow with 2.9% in 2024, 3.2 in 2025, where we forecast cargo demands on various trade lanes to grow between 3%-4% in 2024, and 3.5%-4.5% in 2025, excuse me, then one can very easily say that unfortunately, supply will outpace demand in the next couple of years. We do see some, some factors that might reduce that supply-demand gap. For instance, we expect demolition activity to increase. We forecast in 2024, a demolition of about 700,000-720,000 TEU. With the new EU regulations, we expect this to have a positive influence on slow steaming.
Obviously, with disruption in the Red Sea, or for example, with the drought at the Panama Canal, we expect this also to have a positive impact on the ton mile ratio. That being said, despite the fact that we'll face challenging market conditions in the next two years, we as Delphis, will remain very well protected, thanks to the contracts we managed to fix for our existing ships. In addition to that, we are extremely confident that thanks to our expertise, we'll be able to continue to start new discussion on long-term projects with our clients, who are in a desperate need to start decarbonizing today. The last slide I wanted to show, zooming in on our 1,400 TEU container ship, because this is unique.
Not only will we have built the first ammonia-fitted container ship in the world, we're actually gonna create the first green route in the Northern Europe industry. That is, together with ammonia partners like NCL and Yara on a 15-year deal. That's about it from my side. I'm gonna give you the words to Willem van der Wel, Managing Director of Windcat.
We're all, please wait for a second as we're trying to fix the camera settings. Thank you.
Good day. Can I continue, or, are we still figuring out some IT? Yes. Good day. My name is Willem van der Wel. I'm indeed the managing director of Windcat, the offshore wind supply division within CMB.TECH. I hope the slide will follow. Windcat, we currently operate a fleet of 52 crew transfer vessels or CTVs, with another five under construction, some of which are hydrogen-powered. Once the slide will show up on your screen, you will see a map where we show our current footprints throughout the European market, the established offshore wind markets, at this time. Windcat has experience, of over 20 years in the offshore wind sector, and with that, we have a thorough understanding of the market's needs, and with, and we've been able to continue to develop our vessels and services alongside the evolving needs of our clients.
In the early wind farms, which were being built from smaller ports in shallower waters, to later generations, with further offshore, larger wind turbines, the demands have changed. And so with that, we continue to develop the right solutions for our customer. We are now further expanding that offering with hydrogen-powered commissioning and service operation vessels, CSOVs, with a fleet of five hydrogen-powered CSOVs on order and one further option, the Windcat Elevation Class, which I will speak about in more detail in a minute. Our understanding of the market and large network with our customers will allow us to provide a high-quality service also with this new asset type. To explain a little bit more on the vessel types that are being used in offshore wind, here on this slide, you will see the various options that exist to transfer personnel to offshore wind turbines.
Starting out on the left with the crew transfer vessel, the CTV, a high-speed vessel, that can easily distribute a large number of personnel and their equipment onto different wind turbines in an operating field. Very cost-effective solution, taking out personnel to wind farms on a day-to-day basis, departing in the morning, arriving back in the evening. CTVs can support the industry throughout the entire life cycle, from construction onto operation and maintenance, and even decommissioning, which will soon start for the very early wind farms as well. They're the main solution for most existing wind farms, longer-term operation and maintenance requirements, up to 20 years and maybe even longer.
We tend to charter out these vessels to the wind farm operators and turbine manufacturers who do the service on longer-term contracts, starting two or five years, but in some cases, even going up to the full lifetime of the wind farm. But now, with wind farms moving further offshore, and turbines growing in size, the CSOV provides an alternative to the shore-based concept of CTVs, whereby personnel and warehouses are brought onto the vessel, and they can stay offshore for multiple weeks at a time. These vessels use sophisticated dynamic positioning systems to safely place them close by to the turbines, also in higher sea states, and then using a 3D motion compensated gangway system to safely transfer the personnel onto these turbines.
Besides the use for longer-term O&M, operation and maintenance services, these vessels have become instrumental in the construction phase and the commissioning phase of wind farms. Then, as a third option, helicopters can be used for personnel transfer as well, but it's only sporadically used due to their limitations in capacity and relatively high cost. The step into CSOVs comes at a natural progression for the company, evolving with our customers to be able to provide them with the future personnel transfer solutions they require. Wind farms are moving further offshore, so some of the newly developed wind farms cannot be serviced by CTVs anymore, and therefore, the CSOV provides an alternative.
It's been part of the strategy of Windcat for quite some years now to also offer these CSOVs, and we've now been able to realize this being part of CMB.TECH, a strategy we have further enhanced by delivering hydrogen-fueled CSOV. We will initially be focusing on the construction support market, more of a spot market, which will see significant growth and increase in day rates. Furthermore, we have the ability to also support the oil and gas market, where we can, of course, benefit from year-on-year relationships with an oil major. Turning now to the offshore wind market, the next decade will show significant growth, not only in the established markets in Europe, but also further abroad, for example, in Asia.
This is expected to increase the demand for CSOVs threefold by the end of the decade, which means that the current order book is insufficient for that demand. Top left, we will show you a little bit about the current CSOV market. 2023 showed a strong market, which is expected to continue in 2024, with sustained day rate increases. We're already seeing charters fixing for this year, but also for the next two years, as they're signing up for their project constructions. These are supporting the expectations on day rates developments. Scheduled deliveries, as said, are still below the expected demand growth for the CSOVs, driven by, among others, the installation of new wind farms.
On the graph on the right, you will show the average development over the last year of average day rates, where it's a continued, sustained development, which we expect to continue over the next year. On the bottom left, a little bit more about the CTV market specifically, which has also seen a good year in 2023, with high demand for vessels, especially in the spring, summer, but continuing into the autumn as well. Majority of the demand there is from operating wind farms, but supported by additional construction demand for new projects. We've seen high spot market rates, even up to EUR 6,000 per day, for a 24-passenger vessel. Moving on a little bit further into the Windcat Elevation Class, a highly spec'd, bespoke design that we have developed with our colleagues of CMB.TECH.
The vessel of 90 or 89 meters in length can accommodate up to 120 people on board, including the vessel's crew, in 90 cabins. It features a large covered warehouse and an open working deck for all the components required for the operation of our charter. In the center of the vessel, you will see a large tower, which is shown on the bottom left as well, which is the tower which is the basis of four of the vessel, actually, the motion-compensated gangway that is being utilized to safely transfer personnel to the turbine and platforms. Furthermore, the vessel is equipped with a large 3-D motion-compensated crane to also transfer cargo safely at sea, and a helicopter deck for transfers by helicopter.
The propulsion of the vessel is diesel -electric, so we have generators that power electric motors to the thrusters, and it features a hybrid battery pack that already reduces the fuel consumption to a very low level. This is further enhanced by then installing a hydrogen-fueled dual-fuel generator on board from day one, the first CSOV that brings clean fuel on board straight from the shipyard. Furthermore, there's a possibility to upgrade the other generators on board the vessel also to dual -fuel in the future. The Windcat Elevation Class, a high-performance, hydrogen-powered CSOV. And now I hand you over to Roy Campe. Thank you.
Dear guests, good day. My name is Roy Campe. I'm the Chief Technology Officer for CMB.TECH, and I'm happy to give you insight in what CMB.TECH Industries business unit is doing. Okay. Before jumping into the technology, I would like to elaborate a bit more on the fuel choice that we are making. On the upper part, you see the traditional solutions on how to decarbonize traditional industries. It's about batteries, it's about solar energy, wind energy, nuclear, even LNG. But if you look towards how we can decarbonize our maritime, these solutions are not sufficient or are not enough to reach our goals. We believe we have to look into synthetic fuels. Synthetic fuels are based or start from hydrogen. Hydrogen, you can produce easily by splitting water with green electricity, with an electrolyzer.
So of course, if that is your base molecule, you're gonna look for applications who can use directly that molecule as a fuel. Of course, if you look towards the number that Michael mentioned, a typical voyage, which is, let's say, using 700 tons of fuel on the round trip between Australia and China, you can see that hydrogen is not the best fuel to store in large quantities. Therefore, we need to combine that hydrogen molecule to a carrier. There are multiple carriers. Maybe the one on the, on the right, it's LOHC technology, they call it. You combine the molecule of hydrogen towards, let's say, the a thermal oil, and then you can boil out that hydrogen again to use it. But of course, it's still an immature technology, has not been proven at large scale.
The other molecule which you can use is CO2, but as you can understand, CO2 is the one we're trying to solve, or it is a bit difficult to show that it is from a neutral point of view. It is possible, but it's not straightforward. Therefore, we believe that the molecule which we all breathe, 78% of all the molecules that we breathe is nitrogen, that we use that molecule to attach the hydrogen to. That molecule is called ammonia. It's known in maritime. It's being transported at, let's say, large volumes. To my, to my head, it's around 80 million tons, it's transported on a yearly basis by ships. The technology is proven for many years, so we believe that hydrogen and ammonia are the real choices if you would like to decarbonize our industry.
It's nice to have a new fuel, but it's also about the technology, how to use that fuel. We have chosen for combustion technology. Why? Because a ship is, let's say, typically using conservative technology, because it has to be robust. You have to rely on it. It has to be- it has to work. It has to be cost efficient, but this is what the combustion technology platform can offer. Furthermore, I have, let's say, the three types of engines, highlighted on this slide. Let's look towards the, the right bottom one. These are the high-speed engines. That's where our story started within CMB. In 2017, we have launched the Hydroville. It was the first ship that used dual-fuel hydrogen diesel engines that were converted from Volvo Penta engines and were approved by Lloyd's Register.
As we believe that the technology is, let's say, focusing on heavy-duty, high-power demands, because if you would like to decarbonize, you have to look into these engines first. Engines that are sailing, let's say, 6,000 hours a year. We also started looking to more power output. Therefore, we have started cooperating with MAN, where we have a second series of engines, let's say, being complementary to what is Volvo Penta is offering together with us to the market. Of course, if you are building ships, we would like to have that these engines are built for the lifetime of the ship, and there you see that the lifetime of a high-speed engine is not enough, then you go to medium-speed engines.
As these are rotating much slower, they have a much longer lifetime, and there we have initiated in 2018, a joint venture with ABC Engines to develop the first hydrogen-powered engines of a medium speed range. We go up to a power of 2.6 MW. We have them both in dual-fuel, and we have them in mono-fuel. If we go to the bigger engines, and there you see that combustion technology is the right way forward, that the complexity of a low-speed engine is the same complexity as a lower one. The only thing that is different is the scale of everything. The camshaft is just bigger. The piston is, let's say, just wider, longer.
We also see that for having the hydrogen molecule to power these low-speed engines, these two-stroke engines, you see that the hydrogen storage is not sufficient anymore. So there we have the clear choice to look into ammonia combustion. And then the property of ammonia that is very, let's say, not an easy-to-combust fuel, is anticipated because a low-speed engine has plenty of time to burn the ammonia completely and very efficiently. We have done that, and we are cooperating with WinGD to bring these engines to the market. In order to come up with all the examples of ships' technologies, we have our own technology development center. This is not something new. It's a team with 25 years experience in working in international projects, complex projects, working on innovation. We were the first ones to initiate hydrogen combustion in 2008, already on, high-speed engines.
So we have test cells which are equipped with hydrogen technology. We have a team who's experienced with supplying the fuel towards these systems, approving it, having safe systems, rubber systems, reliable systems, and we have been doing that since 2008. As we have seen that it's not the technology of the engine that is the most difficult part, it's the chicken and egg story that we need to solve, and therefore, we have developed a dual-fuel technology. Our first engine that applied to dual-fuel technology is already from 2012. From that, we have been putting these into the field. There are more than 100 applications already driving or sailing around, and we have been fine-tuning our technology so it could be implemented to many more platforms. It's a nice team.
I would welcome everybody of the guests also visiting our technology center, because there is plenty of stuff to see. Now, making the link with our maritime, 'cause we are still a maritime company. We believe that in the port, everything comes together. Is it not for the location where the hydrogen molecule will be produced due to large hydrogen electrolyzer, it will be to the import of the molecule into our port. And if you see that a port is a hotspot as well for heavy-duty equipment, which are very hard to electrify, you see that all in one cluster being located. I will highlight then, over my next slides, what I really intend.
Here you see a typical picture of a port, of a terminal, and I can show you for many other ports, similar like pictures, but I'm gonna highlight some topics to explain what we are doing. And maybe the easiest one, you can see a tugboat? You have these large ships, they are being assisted by tugboats, helping the ship to berth towards the terminal. Then you have the cargo with this, for example, a straddle carrier, and this is in fact the picture of the terminal which is used to have a dual-fuel straddle carrier. And that can bring, let's say, on 20-hour shifts a day, bringing the container towards the warehouse, where it's being picked up by trucks or by railway.
As you can see, the railway does not have these overhead lines to electrify, because it's just not possible, 'cause we need to put these containers on top of the carriages. You also see the high reefer amounts. They consume a lot of electricity. There, our hydrogen gensets can also power these reefers, because I can tell you, there will be a lot of equipment that needs to be electrified. The grid cannot easily make that transition, therefore, hydrogen-powered genset are also an important one. Another project we developed is our mobile refueling. It's nice to develop the first CTV and the first, first hydrogen-powered tugboat, but we also need to bring that molecule. We have developed a technology that brings the molecule from where it is being produced-... on board of the ship or on board of the application.
Then as a last thing is that here you see, at the back of the port is the chemical industry. The whole, many ports have underground hydrogen pipelines. On this terminal, the hydrogen pipeline is there, available. It's quite obvious that also in the port like Antwerp, Rotterdam, and many other ports, there are large-scale projects being announced to produce the molecule. This logistic chain is the one who can afford to have this molecule and is also having the need for this molecule. So going more in bit to detail about the, the system we have developed, for the online audience, it's not easy, but behind me there is a truck. People can see it, you can touch it, it's real, it's driving. It just came in, here this morning. What do we do there?
We start from a proven diesel truck platform, which has maintenance schedules, which has service technicians, which have, let's say, spare part services around the world. The only thing what we did is we installed six hydrogen tanks onto a frame, and we bolted that frame on top of the chassis, and we use our dual -fuel technology to start using that hydrogen and to thereby saving the emissions. If the hydrogen is not available because it's on a route where it's not passing any refueling station or there is maintenance at refueling station, it can always operate. But this is the most cost-effective, let's say, transition technology for that logistics industry. We have started on an easy way, meaning that we did not influence the software, we did not change the hardware.
We have, let's say, homologated emission test results, which are reaching, let's say, the 22%, and in the field we're a bit higher. But it's our goal to convert the software to improve the hardware on these engines to reach the 80% emission reduction limit while driving at the highway with a full load, and we see that possible to have in reach. The cargo handlers, as I said, maybe it sounds easy, but these equipment, they cannot drive on the public roads. So if you would have one refueling station on hydrogen and there is a maintenance, they will always prefer to have a dual -fuel technology.
Furthermore, from our first project, we learned that as these systems cannot drive on the public roads, maintenance is being done on the terminal itself, meaning that you need to be able to train people to do that maintenance on the hydrogen technology. But now we see that people who do maintenance on a diesel engine can do maintenance on a hydrogen engine. And even on the hydrogen storage side, it's the same principles, it's the same tooling that you need. We see this as feasible at an affordable cost because we only need to install the hydrogen storage, which is, let's say, feasible, affordable to do. The nice thing is that our cooperation with Volvo Penta has resulted in an 8-liter engine. This is the workhorse of all port equipment.
It's not just a straddle carrier, it's a yard tractor, RoRo tractor, RTG crane, and many more. So we believe these hotspots will help us also not only to bring hydrogen to the terminals, bringing hydrogen to the ships, but also bringing the technicians into the port, which we're gonna require if a ship is coming to the port. If somebody's, like, doubting, "I would like to have my hydrogen tugboat, but how am I going to organize it?" This is for us, the mix, and making it work. Then you see also, our belief into, the locomotive, because we have our BeHydro platform that is co-developed with ABC Engines. Today, just in Belgium alone, they are driving 170 locomotives, which use the base engine, which we have converted into dual -fuel. Also, we have many customers bringing ore towards our bulk carriers.
They need to transport that ore from the mine towards the port. They show interest into chartering our, let's say, low-carbon ship, but then it's also an obvious question that the cargo from the port towards the mine also need to use the same platform. And we have the technology. The engines are there, are proven, and now we have started working in Africa on converting two of these locomotives with a hydrogen engine to showcase the technology, showing, as we have done on a tugboat, as we have done on our CTV, as we have done on our trucks, to showcase it works. We're ready for the market. We are ready to, let's say, decarbonizing. Also into the port, so we have the long-haul trains. We also have shunting locomotives. These are the smaller ones who make and form trains at this size.
As you can understand, at chemical sites, you cannot have electrical overhead lines because if they create a spark, it's just not allowed. They need to use diesel engines. Now we can offer something which is zero carbon. And then again, if you're working with high-speed engines, these engines come at a much lower cost. You can easily swap them with the mono-fuel engine, which we also have, let's say, developed already, but there, the supply of the molecule needs to be there. Then as a last topic is the power genset. As we have seen that these engines has been developed, we put them into the market. We already, let's say, over the past years, we have fine-tuned our technology.
We have, let's say, entered into smart partnerships, and we see that the engines that we have are an ideal product also for, let's say, the leasing market, because it's an engine, it's rather cheap. It's not subject to the quality of the hydrogen. Even if there's a bit of impurities into the hydrogen, the system always works. Even at this freezing temperature, if it just remains outside as a backup, if you just press a button, it starts. This is proven. This is the way we'd like to go forward. And then as a last thing is the link for the power barge, because there's a regulation that the big sea ships, when they come into the port, they have to switch off their diesel engines.
We can supply them with clean electricity everywhere in the port because we can easily install our engines, which are, in fact, also the engines which we have on board of our ships. We put it onto a barge, we come from the water side, and we can supply the electricity to the ships. So these are just the ideas of the ecosystem of a port, where we believe we can be also the added value to our bigger group.... For now, I would like to pass on the word to Liesbeth.
Good morning, good evening, or good afternoon, depending where you're listening. My name is Liesbeth Verhaert, and I'm responsible for the H2 Infra division at CMB.TECH. I'm going to give you an overview on our projects and what we are doing currently in our division. Like Roy already stated, everything started with a small hydrofoil, right? A passenger vessel on hydrogen, right? It's a starting point of CMB.TECH, and of course, it's not only about the vessel or about the ship, but we needed to supply it with hydrogen. Because there's not really a lot of solutions on the shelf, we built our own hydrogen refueling station in Antwerp, right? It's to support that first vessel.
Based on that one, we of course had that one spot where we could source that hydrogen, and where vessels could come onshore. But it's not a solution for everything, because of course we also have port equipment, we also have tugboats, a lot of other equipment which can't come to that one hotspot. And that's why we developed that mobile refueler, which can drive to every place to support with the refueling of that equipment. The next topic and the next ambition, but that's a project which is still in feasibility phase. If you look to hydrogen, it's an offshore refueling station, because then, of course, we have onshore solutions, but that's our offshore solutions for our CTVs and other vessels.
Then hydrogen is one of the molecules we're looking to, but we're of course also looking strongly into ammonia. Why ammonia? That's already explained by Roy in the previous slides, but it's really a critical thing for oceangoing vessels. If we want to have... we have need for that ammonia, we need to produce it on a large scale, and we need to produce it cheap. That's a key topic, and that's why we're looking to Namibia, because there we have the opportunity to produce it of an economic, economical cost. It's not only that one, but it's of course also Namibia is a stable country, right? It's a democracy, let's say. So that's a key topic why we selected Namibia, and also port infrastructure. We are like a shipping company.
Ports is a key topic to evacuate your molecules, so that's a big added value. And also land, right? It's not very crowded, Namibia, and there is a lot of abundant availability of land to build our projects there in Namibia. So we kickstarted there already several years ago, and we formed joint ventures together with Ohlthaver & List, and that's the biggest private company in Namibia, right? More than 5,000 employees. So really with a lot of experience in Namibia. And we also discussed and put it forward a strategy, it's not a strategy of going immediately very big, and strong. It's really a strategy of going step by step on a phased approach, different projects, to build up experience, and to make it step by step, more concrete.
That's really our aim and our ambition, and we can already say that we're very successful, right? It's because if you see the picture above, it is a picture of our first project, which is currently in construction. It's a hydrogen refueling and production H2 project, 5-megawatt electrolyzer and solar park, and we're currently building that project with the aim to have it operational in mid of this year. Yeah, and below, you also see some other pictures of what we are doing within H2 Infra. So maybe going a little bit more into detail about our different phases, about our different projects and our approach in Namibia. So we defined four phases. The first one, I already show you the picture about the construction works, which are ongoing.
You also see there the render, how it will look like, within about six months. That's a small scale project, but after that project, we will going to do go to the next project, really a bigger one, the ammonia storage and bunkering facility, which I will explain you later onwards. That give us access to the required infrastructure to bunker our vessels there, with blue -green ammonia based on the our ambition. So then the third step is really go to the industrial scale project, that's a almost gigawatt scale project. And the last one is really having the platform to upscale largely based on the requirements. That's that's the phases. And so to go back to our first phase, but why has it such a big added value, that phase?
Several reasons, right? We are building up expertise step by step. A local team, right? It's, it sounds easy, but having the skilled engineers train them, it takes time. So that's a big added value. Also getting experience in the country, because sometimes governments can promise you the world, but in the end, you need to experience, you need to see it, you need to feel it, and you need to prove it. And it's happy to say that we're already proving it because we're building. Build up also a reputation locally, right? It's key. It's a small country, like I already stated, so everybody needs to trust you, and to go within your story, together. It's not only governments, but also local communities. They saw a lot of investors, the past years, the past decades-...
They will see it. It's really seeing is believing, and that's a key topic. Of course, also, yeah, it shows, yeah, that we can do a project in Namibia, right? It's a key topic. So like, it's like, yeah, below, you see a picture of our first hydrogen equipment, which was delivered already some months ago in Namibia, together with the president and the workforce there, at that spot. It's a project of about $40 million. It's not only the hydrogen production, because afterwards we also add small scale ammonia plant at that site. So the second phase is our ammonia terminal. That's giving us the opportunity to bunker and to store ammonia locally.
And it's creating a gateway from a country with abundant solar irradiation, and one of the best worldwide, to market to our fleet, to the customers. Currently, we're doing the front-end engineering design. It's basic, the basic engineering, let's say. And we're also looking to that jetty, because there's an existing jetty which can be adapted with the required ammonia pipelines, and that can be used. So it's close to that existing jetty in the port area, let's say. Ambition is to have it operational 2026. And then, of course, you're going to the last two phases. It's really scaling up what we did then in those two small phases.
The third phase is really built in a large scale industrial plant for produce ammonia about 900 MW solar park and 500 MW electrolyzer. And of course, it's for our... Its ambition is to have availability and access to that green molecule at low cost. And we will produce and produce that and do that project in cooperation with other companies. Also acquiring the knowledge on green ammonia production. And what we are doing here will help us strongly also on offtake agreements, other ammonia offtake agreements, because, yeah, it's not only this one which will be sufficient. And then, of course, also it will give a platform this project will make a platform for large scale upscaling in the country, in Namibia. So that's it.
So we now did pre-FEED and preparing for FEED. So that's also the status and the ambition, operational 2028. Then the last one, it's already mentioned, I think, because of course, there will be a big need for green molecules. So it's not doesn't make sense to just have a place where you can do one project. It needs to have one project, which has the availability and the opportunity to upscale largely. And that's, of course, the end goal, and then we can support that upscaling from CMB.TECH onwards. So that's the different phases of our project in Namibia. And I give the word back to our CEO, Alexander Saverys.
Dear all, we will now start the Q&A session. We will first handle the live questions, and then we will turn to the questions on Teams. Once we get to Teams, if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Once we say your name, please unmute and ask your question. If you are not able to handle every question in the Q&A, you can send them to communications@euronav.com. You can find that email address in all our press releases in writing, and we will answer and publish them. We will now start with a live Q&A session.
Good. Thank you, Enya. So, as Enya said, well, first let me thank all the presenters, my management team, for giving you a lot of information, I think. There's, of course, more information in the presentation that was published this morning, on our website. As Enya said, the questions that we could not answer today, never hesitate to send us the questions afterwards. We'll definitely try to communicate this to you, and every answer will always be published, on our website. We'd like to start with questions from the live audience, and, the people that are logging in digitally, you will definitely have the occasion to ask your questions, after that. So any questions in the audience here? Yes.
Just one second, we're gonna bring the microphone so that the people online can listen to the question as well.
Please also begin with introducing yourself a little bit so everyone knows.
No problem. So I'm Wim Devey from KBC Securities. Thanks for the very informative capital markets day. I have three questions, if I may. First is on the regulation enforcement. I think that's gonna be very important, the ETS, the IMO. So my first question is really, I think China has a very important position in the IMO. Can you say what's going on with the Chinese shipping companies? Are they also following your plans? I think if they do, then that could be a positive, or if they're hesitating, that might kind of force China to block or to play it more difficult.
Okay, so there's two questions on the Chinese regulations and on Chinese shipping companies that compete with us.
Yes.
Let's first talk about the Chinese regulations. I think any Chinese vessel, Chinese-owned vessel that comes into EU will have to comply with EU regulations. Any foreign vessel that comes into China will have to comply with Chinese regulations. Have the Chinese developed a similar scheme as the EU yet? Answer is no.
Are they talking about it? Answer is yes. Our feeling is that they will relatively quickly implement it, and if they do, it will only be positive for companies like ourselves, because any vessel that would call China will have same regulations as in Europe. Now, zooming in on our competitors in China, as you know, the vast majority of shipping companies in China and in many Asian countries are government-led or policy companies, where bottom line sometimes is less important than geopolitics. Having said this, they are acutely aware that in order to remain competitive, they will need to follow some of the regulations that are being imposed worldwide. Are they doing it yet? No. They usually are early or late followers. Will they one day do it? I'm convinced, they will.
Okay, thanks. Then second question is on the container shipping. You referred to GDP growth as a driver, which has been so in the past. Now, what we see now is some trends like de-globalization, nearshoring, so Chinese companies also moving their production into Europe. Can you comment anything? Is that something you've taken into your plans? As we also saw, I think lately in Antwerp shipping, container shipping has come down this year despite growth. So how's your view on that, on the nearshoring potential?
I think shipping in general is linked to GDP growth, for sure. The de-globalization, what you talk about, is a double-edged sword. At face value, you might say if relocation happens, it will be negative for shipping. That is not always the case. If you move a factory from China to Northern Africa, and that Northern African factory then starts exporting again to Vietnam or to the United States, it creates extra ton-mile. It's very difficult to assess the impact of relocation of factories. What we do see is that there's a trend that container shipping demand grows. Sometimes it goes down, for instance, very immediately after the COVID crisis. Then during the COVID crisis, it goes up, and it shoots up, but in general, it does follow GDP growth.
We are not worried that there will be a fundamental decoupling between shipping demand in general and GDP growth.
Okay, thanks. Then the last one is maybe a cheeky question. In your overview of the history, you have the spin-off of Euronav from CMB. I think just before that, there was also Exmar that was spun off from CMB. When we look at their plans, they... I see certain similarities, and, and obviously, I think they're also still in the same building. Are there any obvious synergies, or is that something in the future that you could consider to also integrate or cooperate or merger or any plans in that direction?
I love the cheeky questions, eh, but I don't think it is that cheeky. Look, we have a common history with Exmar, as you know. They have their own very clear view, their own strategy, and they're sitting in the same building has a big advantage, is that we can compare notes, that we can see, what they are doing, what we are doing. There are today, obviously, discussions ongoing, like we have with many different companies, on what their strategy is in decarbonization, on what kind of molecules they want to move in the future. But right now, there are no discussions. Maybe what you're hinting at, at integrating operations even further, I think it's two distinct companies with two distinct strategies.
Thanks.
Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. First question on CapEx guidance. You guide for something like $3 billion-$5 billion in the coming three to five years, and your CMB.TECH under construction CapEx was already labeled $2 billion. The remaining $1 billion-$3 billion of CapEx, where will that be going to? Does that include the $2 billion for Namibia, for instance, or something like that? And how much, let's say, oil tanker is envisioned there?
Yeah. So thanks, thanks for the question. First, let me zoom in on, the committed projects, because the $3 billion-$5 billion that you are hinting at is guidance that we think that we can deploy in the next five years, but it's very loose guidance. On the committed, we are now, as you know, still having to pay $2 billion in CapEx, of which $1.625 billion has already been financed with our banks, and $361 million will come out of Euronav cash. So that is what's committed today. The $3.5 billion that, we mentioned in the, in the sheet is an indication, a loose indication of what we think we can deploy in the next five years. Could it be $2 billion? It could be $2 billion. Could it be $10 billion?
It could be $10 billion. It will very much depend on the pace at which we can develop the projects that are under discussion today.
Yeah. Clear. Yeah, second, maybe related question is, in the whole presentation pack, I'm not seeing the word Ocean Yield, and, especially on the Newcastlemax, how many vessels will be sell leased back, whatever construction, and, is that, let's say, in what way is this part of the CapEx? Of course, your CapEx guidance is IFRS-
It's included.
Guidance.
I get your question.
Yeah.
So, you saw the break-even rates, P&L break-even rates that were in there. They obviously take into account the interest element of the different financings, and we have basically the whole variety of financing products. So the traditional shipping finance, but also including the lease finance, like, for instance, with Ocean Yield.
And that's part-
But that's including indeed in,
In the $1.6 billion-
The $1.6 billion, yes.
Label.
The $500 million that we have already.
Yeah.
Yes.
Clear. Next question is on the purchase price. You indicate something like $780 million goodwill, which this reverse accounting means CMB.TECH is bought for something like 3x equity value. Is that correct, roughly? Yeah. Okay, just, double-checking, there. Next question is on how you... Let's say the board asked for a fairness opinion on, the value of CMB.TECH itself, the assets. We've seen that. Has there also been a fairness opinion on, the impact on diversification, on the value of the whole of Euronav, meaning, the potential of getting a holding discount similar to other diversified shipping or holding companies? Has, has there been any external advisor advising there and, and indicating, well-
No, not, not that I'm aware of. So you're specifically talking about the risk of, Euronav, the new CMB.TECH in the future, if the transaction gets approved, to be seen as a holding and then a discount to the holding?
Yeah.
No. That analysis has not been made as far as I'm aware.
Okay. Then for now, maybe, a final question is, how you aim to have the free float or liquidity as high as possible, post this bid you are forced into. What now if, let's say, post-period, the free float is just 10% or so, what is then scenario B or C?
We have very different scenarios-
Yeah.
whether we have to buy 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40%. But definitely, we will see what the outcome is. But for every scenario, there is a plan. Our ambition has been clearly stated. We don't want to delist, so logically, we will of course, make sure or try to make sure that we have sufficient free float. But again, a lot will depend on how many people eventually will tender their shares.
Yeah, because many, let's say, of my, let's say, other clients, all have their... tick the boxes, and probably require at least 25% free float.
Yes.
Or at least 30, whatever they have been fined.
Look, this, we are not telling a growth story for a company where we would envisage 10% free float. But we do want a large free float, because otherwise our whole growth story could be jeopardized. Now, depending on the outcome of the mandatory bid, we will take the necessary measures and, and scenarios.
Okay, thanks.
Good morning. Gert De Mesure, VFB. Yeah, Wim hinted at the possible merger or link with Exmar sooner or later, but I think it's- it will maybe before see some of the opposite, you act as a kind of venture capitalist for some activities. For example, with the activities in Namibia, when you see the capital that you need, will you be able to finance that? Maybe will you have to partner with other companies once they are more matured, just like the activities with the offshore wind 3i Infrastructure as some group, ESVAGT in Denmark, maybe sooner or later you will have to team up or you will bring them to the market. Is that a possibility, or maybe it's too early? What can you say about that?
Specifically on Namibia, it is too early because we're still doing the pre-FEED phase to exactly determine what the amount of money is. There's different scenarios. We could basically fund as much as we can and want, or we could take minority stakes, or we could outsource parts of the project. I think you have seen from what Liesbeth explained, it's a huge solar park, a big electrolyzer park, an ammonia factory, and an ammonia terminal. In every part, in every sub-part of the project, there's different financing possibilities, both on the equity side and on the debt side. That decision has not been taken yet because we're still doing the pre-FEED. But I'm not ruling out, Gert, what you are hinting at, that we will partner up with strong industrial partners to bring this project to fruition.
Okay, thank you.
Ian Lewis of TradeWinds. I just wanted to ask a question about events in the Red Sea, because shipping is all about sentiment and timing, and you couldn't have predicted what was going to launch this event on the day that the U.S. and U.K. forces had launched an assault on the Houthis. Do you expect this would have any bearing upon this process? Or what are your views on that, positive or negative?
Our view, Ian, so far, is that we regard the events in the Red Sea as an important short-term event. As you know, the Euronav vessels and the CMB vessels are avoiding the area until further notice. The safety of our crew and our ships is basically what it is all about. We do not think this will last for a very long time, and with a very long time, I'm talking years. We do hope that a quick solution will come. Obviously, with the events of the recent days, it is not going in the right direction. But eventually, we think because of the importance of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal passage, this will be resolved in the following months....
But we are monitoring it, as you are, and making sure in the meantime that our vessels are sailing via the Cape of Good Hope and not having to transit the Red Sea. Good. I think we can pass to the digital questions, people that are logged in.
Quirijn Mulder, you can ask your question now. Please unmute first.
Good morning, everyone. Quirijn Mulder from ING in Amsterdam. I have two questions. My first question is about the infrastructure. So, let me say, to have a dual-fuel vessels, ready by 2025, 2026, you also need to have, infrastructure on the ports. So how far is that? Because I think that is the main bottleneck. It's easier to have something on- yeah, to have vessels, with dual -fuel, but it's more the infrastructure which is playing a role. And my second question is about ESG. I understand that E is, is fine, but with regard to the G, what do you think about the... What would investors think about the fact that three family members are now in the board of, CMB.TECH?
Is that a problem, or do you think they will be enhanced to participate in the offer of the mandatory offer from CMB? Those are my questions.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Yeah.
Yes. I'll zoom in on the first one first, on the infrastructure. It is clear that with all the new green molecules that have to come to the market, a significant investment in the ports is necessary. That investment is not just starting, so many projects still have not been approved, and by 2025, 2026, it will rather be the exception than the rule to have ammonia bunkering facilities, for instance, or hydrogen bunkering facilities available in ports. This being said, there are certain corridors, and I'm alluding to the Australia to Singapore to China corridor, where both in Australia and in Singapore and in China, we are expecting at least some kind of base infrastructure which will be able to deliver the molecules.
But I think it's also very important to say that it is not because the infrastructure for refueling is not available, that we will not be able to engage with our customers to go for our new vessels. A lot of our customers see our ships as a long-term investment, and even though in the first two, three years of the operation, they will not be able to bunker large quantities of ammonia, they need to have a future-proof asset in their hands, and that's why one will not basically impede the other. It's on the infrastructure, 25, 26, a little bit, but then we really feel it's going to ramp up. I mean, just ask any port in the world. By 2030, everybody has a plan to provide these new molecules. Then let's talk about governance.
I first of all think it's a fantastic idea. We have three brothers who get along very well, who work hard from the morning until the evening, and who have the biggest skin in the game in this story by having 53.5% in the company, be perfectly aligned with the value creation of any other shareholder. This company has been run without a reference shareholder and without a representative of the shareholder in the management board. Has the stock traded above NAV? No. It's traded below. So on the G, of course, I will need to prove it to you. Watch this space, and please judge us on the value creation, and not just because we have the same last name. But I personally think it will be a positive and not a negative, if that answers your question.
Thank you.
Thank you. Mr. Sissener, you may unmute and ask your question, please.
Hello, Philippe Sissener from Sissener. Thank you for taking my question. One of them is similar to what ABN AMRO asked, is I just want to have this 100% clear. Are your current CapEx commitments fully financed?
Yep. Yeah, thanks for asking the question. So yes, the answer is yes. Again, going through the $2.5 billion of commitments we have, $500 million has already been drawn. Out of the $2 billion we still need to pay to the yards, $1.625 billion has already been financed, and $360 million is still open, but this we will get from the cash from the sale of the 24 VLCCs to Frontline. But thanks for asking the question.
Perfect
A gain, because indeed, it's an important point.
I do have some follow-up questions on that.
Sure.
All these different entities, are they cross guarantees? Are they silo financed, or do you have parent guarantees to all entities? Or how, how, how should we look upon the financing of each entity?
I'll hand over to the specialist, my brother, Ludovic, with the same last name.
So, it's a good question. So typically, in the group companies, we give a parent guarantee. In every traditional shipping file, I think we show to our lenders, whether it's leasing houses, banks, or shipyards, we show commitment that is, we are not an SPC. We're not a special purpose company. We do have a long-term commitment to doing business, and we give a parent guarantee. So now, Euronav will have a parent guarantee.
But it is a good point, though, that in the rollover of CMB.TECH to Euronav, there is quite a lot of guarantees being given by CMB, either as parent and shareholder. We are, as we said in the press release, working on a rollover to switch the parent guarantee from CMB to Euronav. Should that not happen, then CMB will continue to guarantee basically for 100%. But obviously, we would like to reduce that time quite as short. On a project like Namibia, like my colleague Elizabeth has said, and Alex mentioned, so it's a $2.5 billion-$2.7 billion CapEx. We have not committed. We have not taken any FID. These projects, though, typically, when in a consortium, do not have a parent guarantee.
That is more a project finance type where we will have 25%-50% together with other investors, and where we will not give a parent guarantee from Euronav.
Okay, that's quite clear. So in the shipping traditional business, you will have the guarantees in place, and in these more venture-
In the all ventures.
Driven. So in this more venture-driven investments, you will try to finance it on arm's length, then,
Yeah, correct.
Non-recourse to the parent. That's perfect. Then my final question, and thanks for taking my questions. Alexander said initially he wanted the company eventually to be priced above NAV and at an EBITDA multiple. Do you have any leverage target, I mean, both short and long run, after the vessels have been delivered on the same multiple? Are you... I mean, historically, the company has had some EBITDA leverage targets, but I'm asking, how will that change going forward with this new management?
No, true-
Do you have any specific targets? Sorry.
Yes, so it's a, it's a good question. The previous management and board had a, I would say, very conservative approach of trying to get two-year cash runway on the bank account, $700, $900, $1 billion cash. That is not the way we do it. I think that is too much. It's too conservative. We want to have the balance sheet sweat a little bit more. Traditionally, in shipping, you finance between 60% and 80% of the new building price. And that is what you will see in the coming months. In the annual reports, you will see a detail of the current financing commitment we have on the fleet on the water, but also in the new buildings, but typically it ranges from 60% to 80% of CapEx. Mind you, then, asset prices shifts.
Right now, we've had an uplift compared to the initial order CMB.TECH did privately, and now has been passed on to Euronav. So that target, 60%-80%, has been going down, thanks to the uplifts in the fair market value.
Okay, but no specific EBITDA target on leverage at the moment?
No, and I think it's a good point you make, and I highlighted before. Typically, shipping companies, due to the cyclicality and to the difficult entry point that investors have to take where we are in the cycle, have been traded on an NAV and then potentially a discount to NAV. What we do hope to create within CMB.TECH is more visibility on cash flow, stronger cash flow with strong counterparties, and hence then morphing more towards indeed an EV-to-EBITDA multiple. But today, unfortunately, that is not the fact.
Perfect. Loud and clear. Thank you very much.
Dear Mr. van der Hagen, you may now please ask your question.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Wouter van der Hagen, Kempen Investment Group. Two questions. First, on the commercial strategy for the bulk carrier fleet, I note that these vessels today are all open. Am I correct to assume that the idea is to operate these vessels on the spot in time charter market and not to act as a tonnage provider by bareboat chartering these vessels out?
Indeed, Wouter. So the aim, as we do already today with the first ships on the water, is to operate them on the spot market. But I would say, short to medium term, we believe we will have customers that want to engage on longer-term time charter contracts. But so it will be including the crewing element that we provide and not a bareboat out.
Okay. And then practically, will these vessels be operated in the Bocimar fleet?
Yes.
So these vessels will then, it will be a fleet that will be composed then of CMB.TECH vessels and privately owned Bocimar vessels?
Yes. Until the day, we don't have privately owned Bocimar vessels anymore. As you know-
Okay
T he non-future-proof fleet is aging, so eventually, when these vessels get out, all the Bocimar vessels will be in CMB.TECH, the new CMB.TECH Euronav. And in the meantime, these vessels will be jointly operated.
Can I maybe jump in there?
Okay.
Wouter, can I maybe jump on another? Because it's, it's a point that has been taken up in the share purchase agreement, that there is a priority right agreement between Euronav, i.e., the CMB, new CMB.TECH-
Mm-hmm
A nd the old CMB.TECH. If two vessels from the different groups would compete at the same time for the same cargo, Euronav has a priority right on CMB. That is a contract we've signed as part of the share purchase agreement.
Okay, clear. Because indeed, that was actually the question. And then secondly, will there be any change towards the commercial strategy for Euronav? And then in particular, is the idea still to operate the large part of the VLCCs on the spot market through Tankers International?
Well, so far, yes, Walter, but you know, with changing markets, that strategy might be adapted. There's two things that are hot topics right now, is what do we do with our older tonnage, which has a very high value? Do we keep these vessels and basically enjoy the high spot market, or do we sell them at a high price? That's a discussion which is ongoing, right now. And then going forward, obviously, we also see that on our more modern assets, we are getting traction with our customers to take long-term time charter coverage. You have seen we have announced, 2 new Suezmaxes with our long-standing customer, Valero, who have come to us, and signed a very long-time charter contract.
That is definitely something we will be monitoring, and this has to do, of course, with the point in the cycle where we are today.
Okay, thank you.
So, I've been told that there are no further questions of... Thijs, you have one more question in the audience? Just one second, they're gonna bring the microphone so that the digital audience can hear what you ask.
Thanks. Thijs Berkelder again, ABN AMRO, although BHF. On Namibia, we've seen, two large announcements by DEME, in Oman and in Egypt. Well, the Egypt announcement, they still have to publish a real press release for that, I think, but, two big announcements on, let's say, where you are for 2028. That's, that's for them, let's say, more or less agreed upon, including big, I would say, government-related, involvement. How should we look at Namibia in that perspective?
I can take that question, Thijs. I think, Namibia is, together with, Oman, Egypt, Morocco, Australia, Chile, one of these countries where wind and sun power can be produced very cheaply at a very large scale. So obviously, they attract the interest of people that want to produce hydrogen, and ammonia. We believe Namibia, from our point of view, has some strengths that a country like Oman or Egypt don't have. But I think the market is so huge, we will need every molecule that can be produced. By the way, you hint that, they may, not only with them, but also with a lot of other developers, we're in active discussions to compare notes on the technology, but also eventually to, compare notes on offtake.
Okay. Thanks.
I see, Enya, that we might have one more question digitally.
Mr. Hristov, sorry if I don't pronounce it correctly, you may now ask your question, please. Please unmute first.
No? Okay, well, if there are no further questions, allow me to thank all of you for having taken the time to come here physically in this room and to dial in via Teams. We enjoyed doing this exercise because it might come as a surprise, but also for us, it is great to being challenged and to have good questions about our strategy going forward and about the company. I repeat that you can find all the information online, both the presentation and the transcript of today. If you have further questions in the following days, never hesitate to ask them to our communications department. We'll definitely give you that answer, and the answers will be published on our website. For now, I would like to thank all of them who have dialed in digitally.
Thank you for your presence, I'm looking forward to seeing you very soon. Thank you very much.