Green Reefers, Seatrade Team Up to Fight Competition

Green Reefers and Seatrade are pooling their refrigerated cargo ship fleets to combat fiercer competition from ocean container carriers.

The Norwegian and Belgian companies will jointly operate a fleet of 48 conventional reefer vessels with capacities of 192,000-315,000 cubic feet in the GreenSea Pool from January 1, 2012.

The ship-owners said they are joining forces to cut costs and maintain their ability “to provide commercially attractive specialized refrigerated cargo services to shippers in response to increased competition from reefer containers.”

Container carriers, led by Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, are increasingly targeting refrigerated cargoes because they command higher rates than standard ocean containers and compensate for the slowing growth in conventional container traffic.

Container lines may order as many as 140,000 refrigerated containers this year compared with about 100,000 in 2010, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants in London. The new pool’s commercial activities will be handled by the newly established CGS GreenSea Chartering BVBA in Antwerp.

Following the agreement with Seatrade, Green Reefers will quit the Hamburg Reefer Pool, which it joined in August 2010, at the end of this year.

Reefer rates have fallen to historically low levels as a shortage of cargo, especially fish exports from Norway and West Africa, outweighed the impact of the scrapping of a record 33 reefer ships in the first half of 2011.

Green Reefers, which narrowed its second quarter loss to $11 million from $13 million a year earlier, said the decline in conventional reefer capacity in recent years and a lack of order for new ships, will enable the remaining fleet to obtain “reasonable” results in the future. The Bergen-based company recently signed a sale-and-lease back deal for six ships to secure essential funding.

-- Contact Bruce Barnard at brucebarnard47@hotmail.com.