A Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered tanker player has been busy in the sale and purchase markets recently.

Brokers report that the chemical tanker specialist Truong Phat Loc Shipping (TPL) has sold the 14-year-old Japanese-built Everrich 7. Greece's Mare Maritime is tipped to take over the 22,779dwt ship.

TPL bought the ship, together with the slightly smaller and one year older Everrich 5, from European interests in 2014.

It is expected that TPL will continue to be active in the sales and purchase market as the company's plan is to have 20 vessels with a total deadweight of more than 300,000dwt of chemical vessels and capacity of 200,000cbm of LPG carriers by 2017. TPL was founded six years ago.

Last week, TPL snapped up a vintage VLGC, the 78,500cbm Gas Scorpio, from Japan's Astomos. This purchase doubled the company's fleet size in the VLGC sector. TPL paid US$39m for the Mitsubishi-built ship after a tender process, some US$1m more than online pricing platform VesselsValue.com says the 1995-built vessel is worth.

TPL bought its first VLGC, the 75,000cbm Everrich 8 in June 2014. The ship was built at Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1990.