zoomImage Courtesy: Odfjell

Despite a challenging chemical tankers market, Norwegian shipping and tank terminal company Odfjell delivered a stable underlying operational performance with EBITDA of USD 46 million compared to 48 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Odfjell’s revenue slowed slight improvement in the first quarter of the year, reaching USD 243 million, up from USD 238 million seen in the previous quarter.

The company said that it was challenged by limited shore tank capacity in several markets which again affected its port efficiency, adding that, at the same time, the top line grew with 4.4% in the quarter.

Odfjell Terminals delivered an EBITDA of USD 9.4 million in first quarter, against a USD 10.7 million reported in the previous quarter. The occupancy rate of commercially available capacity was 93%, compared to 94% last quarter.

“We expect 2017 to remain challenging, but our underlying operational performance is stable. Over the past two quarters we have taken crucial steps in renewing our core fleet at a very low point in the price cycle,” Kristian Mørch, CEO of Odfjell SE, said.

The company added that it expects the second quarter 2017 time-charter results to be marginally lower than in the first quarter of the year. In a long-term perspective, Odfjell believes the markets to be “fairly balanced and to gradually improve.”