Odfjell (ODJBF), Ardmore (ASC): Swing Tankers Skip Chemical Trades

Between May and August 2026, Odfjell SE (ODJBF), Ardmore Shipping (ASC) and Scorpio Tankers (STNG) each told investors on their quarterly earnings calls that the tankers able to carry both refined products and chemicals are staying in the product and crude trades, where daily earnings are higher, instead of returning to chemical cargoes.

Gulf contract cargo disappeared, and the dual-capable ships did not come back

A chemical parcel tanker is a ship whose hold is divided into dozens of separate tanks, so it can carry different liquid chemicals and vegetable oils for different customers on one voyage. Odfjell is the Norwegian owner that specialises in exactly this trade. Roughly half of that business used to rest on COAs — contracts of affreightment, under which a cargo owner commits to a volume over a set period at a pre-agreed rate — and the Middle East Gulf was the main source of those contracted cargoes. After the Gulf conflict, that cargo disappeared as a block. Odfjell replaced it with spot cargo booked out of the United States and Asia, and its contract share fell from 57% to 45% in a single quarter [1][2].

The other side of the market moved at the same time. Some product tankers have coated tanks, so after cleaning they can also load chemicals, and their owners deploy them wherever rates are higher. The industry calls this swing tonnage. Product and crude earnings are now high enough that those ships stay where they are, which leaves fewer chemical-capable vessels actually available than the fleet list and the order book suggest [2].

Three owners' daily earnings explain why the ships stay away

Ardmore runs product tankers and chemical tankers side by side. It disclosed second-quarter earnings of $51,900 per day on its MRs against $26,900 per day on its chemical tankers. Into the third quarter, with 45% of MR days booked it reported $29,600 per day, and with 50% of chemical tanker days booked it reported $25,000 per day [3].

Scorpio owns no chemical tankers at all, yet arrives at the same arithmetic inside its own fleet. It moved some of its LR2 product tankers into the crude market, 66% of the LR2 fleet is now trading crude, and so although more than half of a 20% order book is LR2s, the tonnage that will actually return to the product market is smaller than that headline [4].

Odfjell shows a different kind of gap. The Clarkson Chemical Tanker Spot Index rose 24% over the quarter while Odfjell's own realised Odfix index rose 9.8% [2]. Taken together, the three disclosures point the same way: the spot market has already repriced, and the revenue still running off older contracts has not caught up.

Contract renewal pricing has become the number that matters

About 20% of Odfjell's contract portfolio comes up for renewal each quarter. In the first quarter those renewals still repriced at a modest reduction in average rates. On the second-quarter call management said it was seeing a moderate increase, gave no figures, and noted that the second quarter is not a heavy renewal quarter to begin with [1][2]. At roughly 20% per quarter, the current spot strength needs about five quarters to work through the whole contract book, which places it in 2026 and 2027 earnings rather than in the results just reported.

All of this rests on the rate spread between the two ship types holding. Ardmore's third-quarter bookings have already compressed that gap from about 1.9x to roughly 1.2x, and Scorpio says plainly that if the spread flips, vessels will move back into the clean trades very quickly [3][4]. Two things are worth watching over the next few quarters: whether Odfjell's contract renewal rates keep moving up, and whether the gap between the Clarkson and Odfix indices narrows.

Companies exposed to the same shift

• Xingtong Shipping (603209.SH): This Chinese chemical tanker owner carries refined products and liquid chemicals on foreign-trade routes, competing for the same US and Asian spot parcels that replaced the Gulf contract cargo. It files no earnings call, so its realised rates never enter the disclosures above.
• Pyxis Tankers (PXS): A small Nasdaq-listed product tanker owner whose fleet carries naphtha, gasoline and diesel as well as vegetable oils and organic chemicals — the swing tonnage described here. It has held no earnings call since 22 November 2024, so where those ships are trading now is undisclosed.
• Kirby (KEX): The US inland tank barge operator that moves petrochemicals from Gulf Coast plants to the export docks. With US-origin cargo replacing the lost Gulf volumes, Kirby carries the domestic leg of that replacement route.

Sources

[1] Drillr · Odfjell SE (ODJBF) · 2026-05-07 · earnings call

[2] Drillr · Odfjell SE (ODJBF) · 2026-08-21 · earnings call

"When it comes to swing tonnage, we expect that the other tanker segments will continue to maintain the present rate levels and that will prevent the influx of swing tonnage into the chemical tanker business."

[3] Drillr · Ardmore Shipping (ASC) · 2026-07-29 · earnings call

[4] Drillr · Scorpio Tankers (STNG) · 2026-07-30 · earnings call

This is only here to help you spot industry shifts and companies that may be overlooked - it is not a stock recommendation.