The charters of the five vessels, one 7,000 dwt bunker/transportation dual purpose product tanker and four 9,000 dwt chemical tankers ended 31 May 2012 and Sino Venus has agreed to pay accrued and unpaid charter fees up to that date totalling $5.55m.
For the year ended 31 December 2011, annual charter fees for the vessels came up to $12.23m while they brought in only $13.83m in revenue, which was insufficient to cover their operating costs.
Titan said the contract termination will relieve the group of the financial burden of paying about $15.32m of charter fees for the vessels for the rest of the contracted term, when they are continuing to operate at a loss due to the continued depressed freight market, high operating costs and competition from new emerging owners in Asia.
"With the termination of the Charter Agreements, the Company can focus more of its resources towards re-positioning its offshore storage operations and transportation operations, in order to improve performance going forward," Titan said in a stock exchange filing.
The group however continues to operate a floating storage units fleet of five VLCCs having a total capacity of 1,469,331 dwt and a transportation fleet of three double-hulled product tankers and one VLCC having a total capacity of 321,441 dwt.
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