Atlas Chemical Tankers eyes east of Suez
Discovery Reports
The mainland's chemical industry has grown about tenfold in the past decade. Together with emerging economies in Asia, the country will lead growth in global chemical production, which is seen to reach more than US$5 trillion by 2015. Focused on the east of Suez market, Atlas Chemical Tankers (ACT) allows shipowners, banks and other investors to partake in these developments by providing specialised turnkey management and operations of chemical tankers.
"We provide hands-on expertise to clients who wish to invest competitively in specialised tonnage, without incurring high overhead costs associated with building a large onshore organisation," say majority owners Carl Edward Jansen and Kenneth Audestad Wara.
"We serve as a platform of consolidation between shipowners by pooling contract volumes, spot businesses and other opportunities. Maximising profitability of our client's ships is our key concept."
Providing a single point of contact for customers, ACT offers a full suite of services ranging from voyage planning and crewing to full-scale cash management.
ACT distributes comprehensive weekly, quarterly and yearly reports covering topics such as market forecasts and earnings updates for each of its 12 first-class vessels.
"We have a continuous focus on costs," Wara says. "We trade the ships in markets where we have a strong presence and experience. It is all about building systems, which generate stable and sufficient earnings, enabling us to be long-term players in this industry."
Servicing the Baltic, northwest Europe, trans-Atlantic and Asia, ACT is boosting its position in the east of Suez. Complementing its offices in Bergen and Singapore, ACT collaborated with Thome Ship Management in Singapore in October last year to handle all technical and crewing services. ACT also signed a long-term service agreement with Tokyo Marine in December. Starting out with two vessels, ACT looks to grow significantly in the Far East over the coming years.
"We're constantly looking for partners in Asia on the tonnage side," Jansen says. "We hope to find companies we can grow with. That's our long-term ambition. Partnerships are not crafted overnight. However, there's a starting point for everything."
