Sovcomflot profits soar in strong tanker market

Citing the buoyant tanker market, the company reported increases in combined freight and hire revenues of 11.8% to $749m, with time charter revenues up 26% to $617.6m.

During the period, 170,200 cu m LNG carriers SCF Melampus and SCF Mitre were delivered and chartered to Royal Dutch Shell. Meanwhile Sovcomflot currently has eight vessels under construction, with a combined worth of $1,279m, including an ice-breaking LNG carrier, one multifunctional ice-breaking supply (MIB) vessel, three MIB standby vessels and three Arctic shuttle tankers.

The vessels are scheduled for delivery between June 2016 and April 2017.."Sovcomflot achieved very strong results exceeding our own forecasts for the period and reflecting a sustained contribution from both the conventional tanker and industrial shipping segments," said Sergey Frank, Sovcomflot ceo.

"The tanker markets were favourable towards shipowners, and Sovcomflot was well positioned to benefit from the anticipated rise in the spot tanker freight markets given the quality and size of its fleet and efficient chartering policy based on in-house analytics."

Sovcomflot is one of the few large tanker owners to have sustained the unprecedented industry downturn in previous years whilst maintaining a very sizable year-on-year investment programme aimed at diversifying our business and expanding the scope of marine services to our oil & gas clients. Sovcomflot’s strategy proved its resilience and offered us greater flexibility to capture the upturn in the conventional tanker market.We are cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year with good trading continuing based on strong supply-demand fundamentals in most tanker segments which we operate in.”