INTERVIEW: Delta Energy Talks Operations, Ownership and Ambition as it Marks First Anniversary

Delta Energy recently celebrated its first year of operations. Last year Ship & Bunker was first to break the news that former World Fuel Services, Chemoil, and GP Global man Chris Todd was launching the new international bunker company headquartered out of Rotterdam.

It would turn out to be one of the more talked about bunker company launches in recent memory.

Just over twelve months on, Ship & Bunker caught up with Todd to see how the operation has progressed, address questions over the company ownership, and discuss their ambitions for the future.

Operations Today

To launch Delta Energy, Todd worked closely with Mudit Paliwal, the founder of Delta Corp Holding (Delta) which currently includes a suite of businesses including the dry bulk shipping operator Delta Corp Shipping. Buying bunkers for the firm's chartered fleet of around 45-65 vessels is the foundation of Delta Energy's business which it does through a combination of  traders and physical supply entities.

Todd has a long history in the ARA market, so it should be no surprise that this was the location for Delta's first physical supply location where it now has two barges in operation. Today, the firm also has one barge operating as part of a physical supply operation on the River Thames in the UK.

In all, Delta Energy's footprint now extends to eight offices worldwide: in Rotterdam, London, Geneva, St Petersburg, Hamburg, Dubai, Singapore and South Korea. It is also able to utilise the group's other offices in Copenhagen, Dublin, Mumbai and Delhi.

Delta has also ventured into the digital bunkering space, in December announcing a partnership with brokerage Bunker Connect, through a joint-venture to be named DeltaConnect, to develop its digital bunkering platform. This followed Delta's September 2021 acquisition of Quantship AI, which uses AI and machine learning algorithms to add value to the bulk trading arm.

Delta has also has been active in setting up new sustainability drives to feed new green products to the market, and Todd was keen to highlight a host of certifications that had been obtained, including ISCC, NABISY, NEA, VERRA and GOLDSTANDARD for the trading of biofuels and carbon credits.

Ownership

One factor in Delta Energy's launch raising much interest in the bunker market is Todd's former employer being GP Global, and critics had suggested Delta Energy was being financed by its former owners, the Goel family.

Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Prachi and Swati Goel, the wives' of GP Global former owners, Manan and Prerit Goel, initially appeared in official records as part-owners of Delta Corp Shipping.

While those same records show they ceased their involvement in May 2021, with speculation over the ownership still lingering, we asked Todd if there was any truth behind the rumours.

"The collapse of GP Global was of course a shock to everyone, so any move going forward of course meant it was impossible to involve the Goels," said Todd.

"Mudit and I knew each other very well and we'd both been placed into a difficult situation by what had happened. Therefore, given the synergies involved between shipping and bunkering, it made sense to organise ourselves together as an integrated business.

"Representatives of the Goel family had been co-owners of Delta Corp Shipping with Paliwal when the company was set up in Q4-2019, but Paliwal had full operational control of the business from the onset. He thus reorganized the business in the early part of 2021 which meant that going forward it had nothing to with the Goel family and immediately afterwards, Delta Energy was also transferred under the new structure."

Since then Delta Energy has made a number of refinements to its structure and it is now 100% owned by Delta Corp Holdings Limited, registered in the UK, which is beneficially-owned and controlled by the Paliwal family. 

"The move of the holding company to the UK was in order to be fully transparent. That is a key tenet of what Delta is about. So now, if anyone has any questions they can now easily look up the ownership information themselves," Todd added.

The shipping entity, Delta Corp Shipping, and the Delta Energy bunker business all now fall under this same parent company: Delta Corp Holdings.

Credit Credentials

Ship & Bunker has reviewed the business registration documents for Delta Corp Holdings, Netherlands-based Delta Energy Fuel Supply & Trading BV and Paliwal's ultimate Ras Al Khaimah-based holding company, Core Maritime Commodities FZC, and each appears to back the picture presented here of Paliwal's ownership of the firm.

Ship & Bunker also contacted various credit reporting agencies to get their take on Delta, and while not all were willing to comment, those that did appear to give Delta a clean bill of health that matches the ownership picture presented in this interview.

Jason Silber, founder of New York-based marine credit reporting agency SeaCred, told Ship & Bunker he had updated Delta Energy's credit report as recently as this month and the firm looks to be in good standing.

"The speed at which Delta was set up and the number of former GP employees now working there has raised some questions in the bunker market about its origins," he said.

"Some have wondered where Delta founder and CEO, Mudit Paliwal, raised the money needed to invest in the business, but whatever its original investors were, the delta group is controlled by Paliwal.

"Beyond these questions, Delta itself seems to be in good financial health, with a range of customers now working with it."

Future Ambitions

In the year ahead Todd says the company is positioned to push ahead with building on its existing footprint.

"The trading side of what we do is expanding and we want to ramp that up this year. Not just for legacy fuels but pushing the envelope in the sustainable sphere as well; so biofuels and carbon credits and so on. You can't have fossil fuel tunnel vision these days. Our home, Rotterdam, has been enormously receptive to new fuels and new technology to make things greener." he said.

"On the physical side we want to add further barges in both ARA and the UK and we are looking at new physical supply operations as well."

The company also has plans to build on its DeltaConnect digital bunkering platform, having brought the service to Singapore and ARA already.

"In short, we are all very excited about the year ahead; building further on the foundations laid down since the inception of Delta Energy," Todd added.