Singapore: In the news more than most this year at our Southeast Asian sister site SeaShip News has been Singapore’s offshore contractor Otto Marine, for better and for worse. The company is on the news site today too. Garrick Stanley has been in the role of group ceo for just over a month now trying to continue the process of making the firm more profitable with an eye to increasing the company’s fleet of offshore support vessels.
Stanley joined Otto subsidiary Go Marine Group back in 2007 as managing director and has over 18 years experience in the industry.
The shipyard has been through a “cost cutting and efficiency consolidation stage whereby fats are trimmed and resources redeployed,” Garrick says. Nevertheless, the upshot is that the yard is now ready to take on new projects, it bagged its first orders for two years towards the beginning of the year, for instance.
“The focus for the yard is to expand our ship repair and conversion, fabrication and newbuilding where the yard can be cost competitive for local content taking advantage of its position in Indonesia,” Garrick says. The yard is located in Batam, near Singapore.
The yard has been very focused in the past couple of years in completing construction of four Norwegian designed VS 491 CD 24,000 bhp anchor handlers as well as a drillship for a third party customer.
In the interview Garrick is keen to portray the group’s full range of offerings beyong just the shipyard.
“The company has definitely developed into a marine services company with a shipyard,” he stresses.
“Our shipping business has now refocused to renew, expand and upgrade our own fleet whilst the shipyard increases our offshore fabrication capabilities and ship repair,” Garrick explains.
Group revenues are currently dominated from Otto Marine’s fleet of 63 vessels operating around the world.
“We are seeing an increase in demand for our fleet and increasing day rates and utilization,” says the new ceo.
Beside chartering, Otto Marine provides services like offshore accommodation, maintenance and services to platforms, crewing and manning services and consultancy.
Most of the vessels are locked in with term contracts with as long as five years. Annual average chartering revenue is in the range of $250m to $300m.
Although some have concerns about rates in the OSV business, Garrick is not worried.
“We are bullish about the sector as it has been relatively flat over the last five years,” he says, adding: “The newbuilding program has slowed in the last two years and the demand and supply equilibrium has started to stabilise.” [19/08/13]
