Eitzen Maritime Services has defied the economic downward trend with its first quarter revenue standing at a notable 86% more than last year, posting sales of $118.1m; up significantly from just $63.7m in the first quarter of 2008.
Annette Malm Justad, CEO, said: “We experienced a very strong order flow in the first quarter. Supply contracts with the military forces of a number of countries more than compensated for a softening demand from the world’s merchant fleet. During the quarter our order backlog grew significantly and our customer portfolio became substantially more robust.
“Going forward we will continue to improve performance and shareholder value through economies of scale and benefiting from improved operational performance in key areas such as purchasing, logistics and global customer accounts. The current economic crisis demonstrates that the large and efficient providers will prevail,” she revealed.
Not emerging completely unscathed from the economic crisis, however, EMS saw a significant reduction in the number of ships under its technical and crew management, and the group’s largest ship management customer withdrew a number of ships in order to rebalance his fleet. In spite of this, however, EMS has proved that larger players with their company assets well-spread are firmly placed for survival.
