Cenam Shipping Co. Ltd. (mgrs. MAHART, Budapest), 1984-1999

As the boom of the mid 1970’s was left behind MAHART started writing off its old vessels. All Hungarian built ships of the company which reached twenty years of age were to be written off. It started off with the three remaining Danube-sea going ships, which in 1984/85 sailed up to Budapest once more for the last time. In February 1984 the ÚJPEST was sold to AMAL which used it under the name ARRABONA with Hungarian crew. Her homeport was not known since letters were carved out of her stamp. According to her crew she ran under Hungarian flag until May, 1985. Then she was purchased by Greek owners and got scrapped up. The ownership of AMAL became 52,2% Arabic by this time. One of them, Affaki Jusuf was the man who as a co-owner of Mena Shipping Co. had bought earlier two MAHART motorvessels the DUNA and BALATON in 1968. The CEGLÉD changed flag also to Panama in 1984 and sailed under the name AGRIA. Why was it all neccessary? Because MAHART wanted to transfer some of its ships into a new, Jersey Island registered joint venture CENAM and operate them under Hungarian flag. AM came from the 52,2% arabic AMAL joint venture company name and CEN was the abbriviation of the Vienna branch of the Hungarian National Bank. The SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR was taken over by CENAM as ALBA REGIA in 1985 and raised Panama flag as well. Though crew was diminished at least remained Hungarian. Since MAHART wanted these ships to sail under Hungarian flag it had to acquisite arabic majority share from AMAL. As soon as it happened the AGRIA raised Hungarian flag again but ALBA REGIA and ARRABONA were sold to a Greek scrapyard by this time. MAHART's ordeal towards the end and rumours about the "one dollar ships" started with these transfers and sales. Questions have not yet been answered neither to mariners nor to the public by any actual leaders of MAHART, even though these series of acts caused yet unmeasurable damage to Hungarian shipping and to the reputation of Hungarian merchant marine.

At the beginning of the 80's MAHART planned new developments. The company looked for new ships and to make things easier they were directly purchased by CENAM and then chartered back to the mother company, MAHART. By the end of 1986 they could cut a deal and purchased three seven years old vessels from Norway. These ships were named BALATON, KAPOS and SIÓ. In May 1987 the two remaining so called „small norvegians” at the MAHART fleet were renamed, the HÉVÍZ to ADRIA and the DEBRECEN to TYRRHENIA. Then in October they became CENAM property too, for the usual one dollar sum. Thus CENAM already had five ships, soon the BUDAPEST and HUNGÁRIA got in their fleet, too. It was a strange situation when the mother company had hardly more ships than its subdivision. In October, 1990 the two years earlier taken over motorvessels the BUDAPEST and HUNGÁRIA were sold for good. They were beached at the West-Indian Alang to be broken up there for scrap. Relatively good price, more than one million dollars, was received for them. In April 1992, it was the turn of the HÉVÍZ and DEBRECEN or rather the ADRIA and TYRRHENIA as they were called at that time. After sale their new name became CAPTAIN JALIL és CAPTAIN BAJAZID under Liberian flag. With this the CENAM fleet shrank again, they had got only three vessels left. Eventually, the three remaining CENAM ships were sold, too. In 1998 the SIÓ and the KAPOS were purchased back by the Norwegians, so was the BALATON a year later. She was renamed to CANNO. Thus CENAM finished its operation, too.

József Horváth: What happens to you Hungarian sea navigation? Aqua Magazin, vol. 24-25-26-27., 2001.