Euronav Brand Guidelines: The Antwerp Tanker Name That Became CMB.TECH in 2024

A tanker company, a French owner and a Belgian shipping line.

Euronav grew out of the European Navigation Company Ltd, a tanker company acquired by the French shipowner Compagnie Nationale de Navigation (CNN), according to English and Dutch Wikipedia. In 1995 European Navigation went into a joint venture with Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB), the Antwerp shipping line, and continued as Euronav Luxembourg NV. Dutch Wikipedia describes Euronav as the result of that merger of two tanker owners.

CMB then took over the whole business. English Wikipedia’s article on the company says that after CMB acquired CNN in 1997 Euronav became wholly owned by CMB and worked as its tanker division; the encyclopaedia’s article on CMB gives 1999 as the year CMB gained full control. In the same period the management decided to replace a fleet of six single-hull ships with larger double-hull tankers built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in South Korea.

CMB itself is one of the oldest shipowners in Antwerp, controlled by the Saverys family, English Wikipedia says, and it also ran the dry-bulk business Bocimar.

In January 2000 Euronav and several other shipowners founded the Tankers International pool, which, Wikipedia says, let the members’ tanker fleets be operated more economically. On 1 December 2004 Euronav gained its own stock-market listing, with shares issued to CMB’s shareholders, Wikipedia says. In April 2005 it formed an alliance with the Greek owner Tanklog, adding Suezmax and Aframax tankers.

VLCCs, Suezmaxes, a US merger and a contest for control.

Euronav’s fleet was built around two crude-tanker classes, the very large crude carriers known as VLCCs and the smaller Suezmax tankers, together with FSOs, floating storage units. In January 2014 it took over fifteen VLCCs from Maersk Tankers in Singapore, part of the group behind Maersk, and in 2015 it bought four tankers then under construction at Hyundai Heavy Industries. On 22 December 2017 it announced a merger with the American tanker owner Gener8 Maritime, completed on 13 June 2018 with Euronav as the continuing company; Dutch Wikipedia gives the combined fleet as 75 crude tankers. A day later Euronav sold six VLCCs to International Seaways, Wikipedia says.

Control of Euronav became contested from 2022. In April that year Euronav and the tanker owner Frontline announced a combination in which, Dutch Wikipedia says, the Euronav name would have disappeared. CMB opposed the plan and raised its stake, and in January 2023 Frontline withdrew. Euronav sought emergency arbitration in Belgium over the termination; in February 2023, gCaptain reported, the emergency arbitrator dismissed Euronav’s request for interim measures. In May 2023 the long-serving chief executive Hugo De Stoop announced his departure, Dutch Wikipedia says.

The two big shareholders settled in October 2023. Frontline and John Fredriksen sold their combined 26 per cent stake to CMB, Frontline agreed to buy 24 of Euronav’s VLCCs, and the arbitration was dropped, Bloomberg reported via gCaptain on 9 October 2023. The deal gave CMB 53 per cent of the votes and triggered a mandatory offer for the remaining shares. By March 2024 CMB and its affiliates held 88.61 per cent of Euronav, Reuters reported via gCaptain, and Euronav left Belgium’s Bel 20 index two days after joining it.

How tanker and bulk owners present themselves.

A tanker or dry-bulk owner sells a service rather than a product, so its identity has to live on its ships and in its paperwork. The oldest signs are the funnel mark and the house flag, painted or flown on every vessel the company operates; today the same hull in company livery is more often seen in an aerial photograph taken from a drone, the ship shown loaded and under way, filling the first screen of a corporate website.

Behind that picture sits the fleet list. Owners publish their ships by class and by name, from the very large crude carriers and Suezmax tankers of the crude trade to Capesize and smaller bulk carriers. Frontline’s home page, for example, counts its VLCCs, Suezmaxes and LR2/Aframax tankers, while CMB.TECH groups its ships under division names such as Euronav for oil tankers and Bocimar for dry bulk. Vessel names can run in a family too: Bocimar’s ships usually carry the prefix Mineral, English Wikipedia says.

Most owners also give space to crew welfare and safety, to environmental reporting and to the next generation of ships. Newbuilding and fuel announcements carry much of the story: CMB.TECH, for one, uses the slogan “Decarbonise Today, Navigate Tomorrow” and in 2026 presented a dry-bulk ship it describes as ammonia-powered, while Frontline’s 2026 fleet-renewal deal was framed around scrubber-fitted “ECO” newbuildings.

Because so many of these companies are listed in New York, Oslo or Brussels, the investor-relations section often does the heaviest lifting: quarterly results, presentations, dividend histories and charts of freight rates. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — where it was founded, who controls it and what became of its name — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Renamed CMB.TECH on 1 October 2024.

Under CMB’s control Euronav changed direction. In February 2024 its shareholders approved the purchase of CMB.TECH NV, Wikipedia says; gCaptain later wrote that the deal added dry bulk, container ships, chemical tankers and offshore wind vessels to the fleet. On 2 July 2024 a general meeting approved changing the company’s name to CMB.TECH, effective 1 October 2024, and the ticker changed from EURN to CMBT on Euronext and the NYSE on 15 July 2024. In April 2024 Euronav had also agreed to sell its Athens ship-management company, Euronav Ship Management Hellas, founded in 2005, to the Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, Wikipedia says; Shipping Telegraph reported in June 2024 that Anglo-Eastern had taken the business over.

So Euronav no longer exists as a separately listed company. Since 1 October 2024 the listed business has been CMB.TECH, headquartered in Antwerp, and the old euronav.com address now redirects to the CMB.TECH website. The name survives inside the group: CMB.TECH’s website lists Euronav as its “oil tanker division,” alongside Bocimar in dry bulk, Bochem in chemical tankers, Delphis in container ships and Windcat in crew-transfer vessels for offshore wind. The company says the Euronav division runs VLCCs, Suezmaxes and FSOs, and that its VLCC newbuildings for delivery in 2025 and 2026 were designed with a future switch to ammonia in mind.

The group kept growing. In 2025 CMB.TECH bought a large stake in the dry-bulk owner Golden Ocean from John Fredriksen’s Hemen Holding and then agreed a merger with it; Golden Ocean’s shareholders approved the merger on 19 August 2025, and it was completed on 20 August, according to gCaptain and Baird Maritime. CMB.TECH now describes a fleet of about 235 vessels, uses the slogan “Decarbonise Today, Navigate Tomorrow,” and is listed in Brussels, New York and Oslo. In October 2026 CMB.TECH presented Mineral Europa, which it presents as a pioneering ammonia-powered dry-bulk carrier.

For a design guide, Euronav shows how a shipping name can pass from a listed company to a division label inside a larger group. Compare Frontline, the rival that tried to combine with it, and Maersk, whose tanker arm sold it fifteen VLCCs in 2014. For this guide we use a Scheldt blue, a mist white and an estuary green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Euronav’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.