The shipping subsidiary of Neste Oil said 21 persons will be made redundant and the other reductions will take place through voluntary retirement and the termination of fixed-term employment contracts as allowed for under the terms of the contracts. The retrenchment programme will take place mainly during 2013.
The three vessels involved were jointly owned with Sweden-based Stena Group and time-chartered to Neste Shipping with agreements ending 2017.
“These measures are the result of Neste Shipping's need to improve its profitability and secure the continuity of its operations,” Neste Oil said in a statement.
“Improved profitability will be essential to enable Neste Shipping to make the major statutory environmental investments that will be required between 2014 and 2017, deal with rising costs, and progress with other initiatives needed to secure the continuity of its operations into the future,” it added.
The “efficiency improvement programme” is expected to increase revenue and reduce costs by a total of around EUR15m ($19.3m) annually. The decisions now taken will save approximately EUR4m in fixed costs annually.
Neste Shipping projected that it would need to reduce personnel numbers by a maximum of 130. The company currently employs around 450 persons.
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