Tankers dominate the fleet

More than a third of all vessels controlled by Swedish owners are tankers, and they also dominate the current order book. Measured in numbers of vessels, the tanker stake is almost 70 per cent. This is however less than a year ago when 44 of 55 ships in the orderbook were tankers. Since then a batch of ro-ro/car carrier orders has resulted in nine new entries in the book.

Three ro-ros are built by Aker Finnyards for recently formed Transatlantic, the result of a merger of B&N Nordsjöfrakt and Gorthon Lines. The vessels, built to ice-class 1A Super and fitted with catalytic converters for emission reduction, will be chartered by the forest giant StoraEnso for a period of 15 years. Transatlantic is one of three shipowning companies listed on the Stockholm Exchange. The company pleased the bourse with its first quarterly report and announced a SEK 118 million (EUR 12.8 million) pre-tax profit, up by almost SEK 100 million (EUR 10.9 million) compared to Q1 2004 (pro rata).

Wallenius has doubled its orderbook by adding three car carrier orders. The latest additions will be the world’s largest car carriers with capacity for 8,000 cars. The company is also actually expanding its fleet with one more ship, but in five pieces. Five vessels will be lengthened in Vietnam, which will increase the capacity of each vessel by 20 per cent.

Gotlandsbolaget is expanding both its tanker fleet and its ferry fleet. Two tankers have been ordered in China and a high-speed passenger/ro-ro ferry in Italy. The latter will join the ferry service between the island of Gotland and the Swedish mainland in 2006.

Fosen Mek Verksteder in Norway is building two 3,000-lane metre ro-paxes for Stena Ro-Ro. The hulls are built in St Petersburg and the first is expected in Norway in November/December for completion.

	The Stena Group dominates the Swedish order book with almost 50 per cent of the ordered tonnage. PHOTO: LARS ADRIANS

Order book dominated by Stena
The Swedish orderbook is dominated by the Stena Group, including Concordia Maritime, with 15 orders, or by 26 per cent measured in numbers and by almost 50 per cent measured in deadweight. Half a dozen new vessels will enter the Stena fleet this year. Among those will be two 116,000-DWT tankers. Intended for Swedish flag, the sister vessels will be the largest ships flying the Swedish flag and they will expand the Swedish flagged fleet by more than ten per cent, measured in deadweight.

Formidable tanker earnings, the successful floatation of Arlington Tankers on the New York exchange and a better then expected profit for Stena Line are some of the ingredients that made 2004 a golden year for the Stena Group.

Göteborg-based tanker owner and operator Broström has ambitiously boosted its position as a leading operator of oil product/chemical carriers. Today the fleet commercially operated by Broström consists of 60+ vessels in sizes ranging from 4,000 DWT to 70,000 DWT. New business deals and deliveries of new vessels will however increase the fleet to close to 100 units in the coming years. In the last few months, Broström has acquired the outstanding shares in Iver Ships, bought Nordtank in Denmark and signed co-operation deals with the Swedish ownerFuretank and Turkish Dünya.

New player in Shipowner arena
The newest players in the Swedish shipowner arena, Stockholm-based STOC Tankers and Svithoid Tankers are expanding. STOC Tankers has ordered a third tanker from Ceksan in Turkey, this time a somewhat larger vessel. The first vessel was delivered last year, the next will enter the fleet this summer, and the recently ordered 5,000-DWT tanker will be delivered in 2007. Also Svithoid has expanded its orderbook by more and larger vessels. The company now has four ships on order in Russia. The latest pair are 4,450-tonners for deliveries in 2006/2007.

Number one for Sweden
With 16 orders, China is still shipbuilding nation number one for Swedish shipowners, but Croatia has narrowed the gap significantly and now holds the second place with 13 orders, followed by South Korea with eight. The Swedish presence is especially noticeable in the Croatian orderbook where more than 25 per cent of the tonnage is destined for Swedish operators, measured in deadweight tonnes.

“Ramona”, the second of three sister vessels to be delivered by Shanghai Edward to Donsö shipowners Älvtank and Furetank.

The Swedish-flagged fleet is in the middle of a modernization phase. New and larger units replace older, smaller vessels. During 2004, the average age of the fleet declined from 18.5 years to 17.8 years. Since old vessels were flagged-out or sold, there has been no significant increase of the fleet yet. The increase was limited to about 100,000 DWT, but the fleet passed the two million deadweight tonnes mark for the first time since 1997 and reached 2.06 million DWT.

The Swedish foreign flagged fleet, owned and long-term chartered, has been reduced by more than half since 1997 and now stands at about 8.7 million tonnes deadweight. Of this, about three million tonnes are chartered in. The reason for this dramatic decline is the exodus by the large tanker operators from Stockholm.
This year it seems as if Swedish shipowners at last will get the tool that almost all other European shipowners have in their toolboxes: the tonnage tax. Late last year, the Swedish government decided that it was time to investigate the issue and a report was ordered for not later than December this year.

With the tonnage tax, the Swedish shipping policy will be almost complete. There are still some issues and national requirements to handle, but if this is done, the general enterprise conditions in Sweden, cost levels and the shipping policy could very well make Sweden a good choice for doing shipping business.

//Rolf P Nilsson