The feeder operator posted a 507.6 per cent year on year second quarter profit increase to $7.9 million, drawn on revenues of $18.3 million, up 35.5 per cent.

"Containership markets, both charter rates and secondhand prices, have continued unabated their upward path that started in the fall of last year reaching all-time highs in all size segments," said Euroseas chairman and CEO Aristides Pittas.

"Selected short term fill-the-gap charters have been reported in extremely high levels while long term charters of two to five years are widely offered by charterers for the various types and ages of vessels," said Mr Pittas.

"There is no doubt that part of the near term increase in demand for vessels is fuelled by the inefficiencies brought about by the effects of the Covid pandemic in the transportation system, in addition to rebounding trade growth.

"However, the strong demand for securing capacity for the medium and longer term can only come from expectations that vessel capacity will be in short supply in view of the expected demand," he said.

"We believe that the favourable market fundamentals will continue as incremental regulatory requirements coming in 2023 will further restrict the effective supply of vessels and assist in absorbing increased new deliveries starting from the latter part of 2023 onwards as a result of recently placed newbuilding order," said Mr Pittas.

"Our broader strategy is to build Euroseas in a key long term participant in the feeder/intermediate containership segment as evidenced with the placement of our order to build two 2,800-TEU vessels to be delivered in the first half of 2023.

Said chief financial officer Tasos Aslidis: "The results of the second quarter of 2021 reflect the increased charter rates our vessels earned due to the major recovery of the market compared to the same period of 2020, despite the decrease in the number of vessels we operated during the second quarter of 2021 to 14 vessels, from 19 vessels operated during the same period last year."