The fall in profits came on the back of a 12% drop in revenue to $194.95m in 2013 as continued oversupply brought dry bulk shipping and container shipping revenue down 11% and 27% respectively.
"With charter hire and freight rate hovering at low levels for consecutive years, the operating environment of the shipping industry became very challenging," executive director Li Hua said.
In the dry bulk division, although overall revenue fell to $180.02m from $201.48m previously, Sinotrans managed to maintain its ocean freight revenue through a "diversified development strategy" for its voyage chartering business. Freight income actually rose slightly to $49.83m from $49.05m in 2012.
The container shipping division however saw revenue fall to $15.58m from $21.42m previously as the group sold four older vessels during the year, resulting in fewer operating days. This also had the beneficial effect though of lowering operating costs by more than a quarter to $12.09m.
Li noted that during the year, the group sold five older vessels and replaced them with five of newer designs which also raised net tonnage by about 380,000 dwt. As at 1 December, 2013, Sinotrans owned 52 vessels with an aggregate capacity of 3.72m dwt and an average age of approximately 9.4 years.
The group also ordered eight handymax and two panamax newbuildings with an additional capacity of approximately 670,000 dwt earlier this year expects delivery of these vessels successively in 2015.
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