Petros Pappas has also explained how an owner of over 100 bulkers will play a market that he expects to strengthen this year and next.
Star this week bought Excel Maritime in a $634.91m move just a month after its purchase of OceanBulk.
Pappas said: “We are here to expand when we see the opportunity for aggressive acquisitions. It is not the number of the vessels it is the organization of the company and I think we can handle more vessels … but only if it is going to be good deals.
Pappas said “I think we are in a continuous search for deals and we have a commercial department both on chartering and S&P that is extremely experienced.”
Pappas added “Also because we are becoming bigger in size people come to us for deals first then they would go to anybody else.
Pappas said “So that gives Star Bulk the opportunity to have a first hand view about deals and therefore when the opportunity arises we will go for it.”
The Excel swoop will give Star an on the water fleet of 34 vessels by December this year.
Biggest fleet on the Wall Street
At 6.642 million deadweight, Star will sit comfortably ahead of DryShips (4.257 million dwt) and Diana Shipping (4.210 million dwt) as the owner of the largest trading fleet listed in the US, according to numbers it presented last night.
Star’s newbuilding deliveries will take its trading fleet to 97 ships by the end of 2015 and to 103 in the second quarter of 2016.
Its overall 11.856 million deadweight is also the largest in the US capital markets, trumping the 8.664 million dwt of Scorpio Bulkers and the 6.996 million deadweight of Knightsbridge.
Let's get to work
Pappas said: “Our eco newbuilding vessels are ideal for employment on a voyage basis while our older vessels may be more appropriate for short or medium term charters.
“As we see the market sentiment improving, we aim to start picking some of these vessels on medium to long term charters.”
Pappas added: “We are positive about the future. So, what we aim to do is to look into seasonality as well. So, the way we will be fixing will probably be at the time that the market is strong and for periods until the market will be strong once again. So we think the second half 2014 is going to be strong, maybe second half 2015 will be even stronger.”
Oaktree Capital is the largest investor in Star Bulk with 57.3%. Pappas and his family hold 9.3%, while Angelo Gordon & Co boasts 7.8% and Monarch Alternative Capital has a 5.4% slice.