COSCO H1 profits up 38% due to boom in its shipyard business

COSCO H1 profits up 38% due to boom in its shipyard business
Source: By Loh Kim Chin, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Strong contributions from its ship repair, ship building and marine engineering business have bolstered the first half profit of COSCO Corporation.

The marine engineering and shipping company booked a net profit of S$122 million for the six months ended in June - up 38% from a year ago.

For the second quarter alone, earnings jumped 58 percent to S$80 million.

Ji Hai Sheng, Vice Chairman & President of COSCO Corporation, said: "We had expansion in capacities. For the first quarter, our capacity was 1.43 million deadweight tonnes. Now it has been increased to 1.73 million tonnes, which is about 21 percent increase in capacity.

"Secondly, we had a lot of new orders - oil rigs, bulk carriers and also heavy lifting vessels."

COSCO's total order book currently stands at US$3.3 billion.

This is evenly spread between offshore (US$1.5 billion) and new shipbuilding (US$1.8 billion) projects.

The company expects the performance this year to be better than last year's.

It is confident that growth momentum will continue into the second half, due to the robust shipyard performance, capacity and capability enhancement, as well as booming demand. - CNA /ls