Otto Marine Secures $131 mln in New Contracts
Otto Marine Limited, an offshore marine company which specializes in building complex offshore support vessels, ship chartering and offers specialized offshore services, has announced that in the second quarter of financial year 2015 (Q2FY2015) till date, the group has secured new orders worth $131 million, primarily contributed by the chartering business.
The substantial increase in new chartering contracts was attributable to the group’s strategy to improve the utilization rate of the fleet, in view of the potential cost that idle vessels will incur. Utilization rate for the group’s chartering business has improved for Q2FY2015 against the last few quarters.
Commenting on the new charter contract wins, group CEO Michael See said, “The group has made encouraging progress in securing new chartering orders and improving the utilization rate for our fleet. While some of the chartering rate is under pressure, it’s still in the best interest of our group to secure better utilization of our vessels than leaving them idle.
The higher deployment of vessels during challenging times once again proved the validity of our geographical diversification strategy that we introduced five years ago. Australia has been a much more stable market for chartering as supported by LNG projects. As we have large-size, DNV-class vessels capable to operate in deep water, Otto Marine is one of the very few Asian operators working for the North Sea market, where we still maintain a reasonably healthy utilization rate. At the same time, Latin America and Africa markets are performing much more steadily than Asia.
We retain good flexibility in managing our fleet size. While we enjoy better profit from our own vessels, we can return chartered-in vessels at expiration, and charter in additional, more technologically advanced vessels that bring in immediate contracts. With our pragmatic strategy and sheer diligence, we remain confident that together with our team, we will work through the difficult times, and embrace better performance when market starts to recover.”