Swee Joo Bhd will take delivery of two new chemical tankers, the 12,700-tonne Asia Success and 7,000-tonne Asia Bright, between mid this month and early April, a company official told StarBiz.
He said the new tankers would join two existing tankers to transport crude palm oil (CPO) and related products to India and China, among other countries.
These tankers would be operated by wholly-owned subsidiary Asia Bulkers Sdn Bhd.
“With a fleet of four chemical tankers to be fully operational this year, this will provide Swee Joo with a stable income in the future as palm oil is still very much in demand,” group chairman Alexander Nanta Linggi said separately in a statement.
The shipping group, through two other wholly-owned subsidiaries Johan Shipping Sdn Bhd and Swee Joo Coastal Shipping Sdn Bhd, also operates 13 container vessels, eight general cargo ships, nine supply vessels and two dual-purpose vessels.
The official said the group had recently sold two old cargo vessels to reduce excess capacity due to a slowdown in demand for shipping services.
“The group has focused its efforts to re-study some of the routes (it is plying) and on lowering the operational costs and improving the load factor,” he added.
Swee Joo’s financial performance was largely dependent on the demand for shipping services, which were cyclical in nature, he said.
As a logistics provider, Swee Joo is also into warehousing and depot services, and provides land haulage and door-to-door delivery services in Sabah and Sarawak.
For its first quarter ended Dec 31, the company incurred a pre-tax loss of RM3.55mil despite a 5.9% increase in turnover to RM91.5mil.
It recorded a pre-tax profit of RM9.45mil for the same period a year ago.
The loss in the first quarter was due largely to a significant drop in the volume of cargo it had transported, the company said.
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