The Heavy-Lift Equity Gap

By Ravi Shankar

From Issue 3, 2026 of Breakbulk Magazine

(2-minute read)

The multipurpose and heavy-lift fleet has a renewal problem that everyone in project cargo can see on the water. Of the roughly 2,300 multipurpose project carriers trading worldwide, DNV counts only 457 with cranes rated above 99 tonnes. More than 100 of those have now passed the 20-year mark, with the 5,000 to 8,000 dwt segment thinning fastest and very few newbuildings behind them.

The orderbook has been slow to respond. For most of 2025, Toepfer Transport tracked persistently low ordering activity in the MPP segment, with yards diverting capacity to repair and retrofit work rather than newbuilds. A cluster of new heavy-lift orders emerged toward the end of the year, led by German and Chinese owners, but the numbers remain small against a fleet where over a hundred heavy-lift-capable vessels are approaching the 20-year mark. Container, bulk and tanker owners continue to absorb the majority of available yard slots, and the pool of yards competent to build complex heavy-lift tonnage keeps shrinking.

So the demand side is strong, driven by energy transition cargoes, wind components and modularized plants, and the supply side is old and thin. Yard availability and regulatory uncertainty weigh on every investment decision in this segment. But in conversations across the heavy-lift owner base, equity is consistently the gap owners find hardest to bridge.

A modern heavy-lift newbuild runs between US$40 million and US$120 million depending on crane capacity, fuel arrangement and specification. Before 2008, a bank might have advanced 70-80% of that. Today, advance rates of 50-60% are the norm, which leaves an owner finding US$20 million to US$50 million of equity per ship. In a sector dominated by mid-sized private operators rather than listed companies, that check is often the entire constraint. Private equity has looked at the space and mostly walked away, because its fund timelines sit uncomfortably against a 25-year asset.

Tokenization of real-world assets is one route to raising that equity differently.

The structure itself is conventional shipping practice: The vessel sits in a special purpose vehicle, exactly as it would in any single-ship financing. What changes is how exposure to that vehicle is recorded and distributed. Rather than one or two backers underwriting the whole amount, asset-referenced tokens on a blockchain let a broader set of capital providers, from institutions to family offices, take fractional economic exposure to the vessel-owning SPV.

What the holder acquires is economic exposure and asset-referenced rights over the vessel. The ship, its flag, its class and its employment are untouched. Only the way the capital is gathered changes.

It is worth being direct about the limits. A token does not make a heavy-lift vessel liquid, and anyone claiming otherwise should be treated with suspicion. Secondary trading depends on regulated venues that are still maturing. And none of it works outside a proper regulatory perimeter covering custody, disclosure and participant protection.

That perimeter is now forming. In Dubai, the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) granted Shipfinex an in-principle approval (IPA/26/01/002) in January 2026 for a maritime asset tokenization platform. An IPA is not an operating license. It marks the start of VARA’s full licensing process, and the platform will only commence regulated activity once that process is complete. That distinction matters, and owners evaluating any tokenization counterparty should demand the same clarity about where a platform actually stands with its regulator.

Tokenization will not replace the ship mortgage, and it should not try to. Where it earns a place is at the specialized end of the fleet, where individual assets are expensive, buyers are few, and renewal is overdue. Breakbulk and project cargo operators have spent two decades adapting to bigger cargoes and tighter emissions rules. An additional, properly regulated way to raise the equity for the next generation of tonnage deserves the same practical scrutiny this industry applies to everything else.

Ravi Shankar FICS is chief commercial officer at Shipfinex and chairman of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers Middle East.