This rise was due to the continued growth of the company’s operating fleet, the company said.
During the period, Navig8 Chemical secured $286.2 mill to finance its newbuilding programme and issued $93 mill in amortising notes due 2027, which are guaranteed by The Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM) with an interest rate fixed at 2.9% per annum.
“The chemical tanker market softened in the second quarter, driven by typical seasonality that was exacerbated by a weak CPP environment,” said CEO, Nicolas Busch.
“We are nonetheless pleased with our operating results, as well as the significant progress we made towards completing the financing of our newbuilding fleet.The latter is notable given the current scarcity of financing available to shipowners and reflects well upon on our business.
“There has been a virtual halt in new ordering of chemical tankers, and the capacity of the global fleet is forecast to rise by only 2.5% over the next 12 months. Against the backdrop of expanding chemical export capacity coming onstream in the US and Middle East during the same time period, we expect underlying demand to outpace the supply of suitable tonnage and a favourable chemical tanker rate environment,”he said.
Navig8 Chemical Tankers had entered into contracts to take delivery of 37 newbuilding chemical tankers. As of the beginning of August, 23 had been delivered.
The remaining 14 vessels are scheduled to be delivered by September, 2017, with five vessels due to be delivered during the remainder of this year, and the final nine in 2017.