Chinese trader Guangdong Zhenrong Energy is hoping to expand its regional trading activity with the acquisition of a majority stake in troubled storage player Titan Petrochemicals, or Petrotitan, according to a highly placed source close to the company.
Guangdong Zhenrong is little known outside of China but is involved in trading and distribution in a number of commodities around the country, including petroleum products, chemicals, coal and edible oils, the source told Platts on Thursday.
The tie-up with Titan would give Guangdong Zhenrong a large stake in a series of storage facilities along China's eastern coast. "That's the purpose they want to acquire the storage network, it has good coverage around the coastline," said the source.
Guangdong Zhenrong signed an agreement on August 1 to rescue Titan in a deal worth over $207 million including interim financing as well as offering to subscribe to new shares in the company giving it a 90% stake in the company.
Its offer comes as Titan is fending off liquidation suits filed by its partner US private equity company Warburg Pincus, which owns a 50.1% stake in the StorageCo joint venture with Titan that owns and operates the Chinese storage terminals.
Guangdong Zhenrong is 44% owned by Chinese state trader Zhuhai Zhenrong, and a number of other private investors. Zhuhai was an offshoot of the People's Liberation Army and now buys about half of China's term crude volumes from Iran, alongside state oil company Sinopec.
Guangdong Zhenrong's Chairman and Chief Executive Xiong Shaohui used to be a high level government official involved in trade negotiations and has close ties with Titan's current chairman Zhao Xuguang, said the source, adding that Guangdong Zhenrong has been around for 10 years and had turnover of about Yuan 30 billion ($4.7 billion) last year.
Titan owns 2.7 million cubic meters of products storage in China as well as six VLCCs used as floating storage for crude and products offshore Malaysia.
It had been hit hard by the global financial crisis and was forced to exit trading activities and divest its fleet of oil tankers in the last few years.
But the entry of Guangdong Zhenrong could herald a return to trading. "I wouldn't rule out that Titan will be back in trading, whether as a merchandising entity or to support trading activities as a pure logistics provider because Zhenrong does have an ambition of [getting involved] in regional oil products' supply. It mainly procures products for China at the moment but does have plans to procure for other countries as well," said the source.
Titan defaulted on $400 million of bond repayments in March, prompting Warburg to file its liquidation suit in Bermuda.
The US company has said it is not interested in Guangdong Zhenrong's offer and has formed a consortium with another Chinese logistics company, SouthernPec, to implement a restructuring proposal in conjunction with potential liquidators.
The source said state company China National Offshore Oil Corp. had previously shown interest in coming in with an offer but the deal fell through following difficulties in getting Warburg on board.
He added that Warburg's claims that Titan's executives were incompetent and did not act in a transparent manner were puzzling. "It has people on the board of StorageCo and they also have an observer on the board at Titan. They were involved right from the start."
Liquidators have been appointed for StorageCo and an auction of the assets has been targeted for the end of the month.
A separate hearing to wind up Titan has been adjourned to September 5.
