Bahri Chemicals
Bahri Chemicals (National Chemical Carriers (NCC)) was established in 1990 as a joint venture between Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) with 20% ownership, and Bahri Group (The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia) with 80% ownership. Bahri Chemicals’ operations include shipping and logistical handling of liquid chemicals, clean petroleum products (CPP), and vegetable oils including biofuels.
Developments in 2023
During the year, Bahri Chemicals celebrated a range of significant milestones. Notably, we successfully solidified our market presence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the volume loaded accounting for an impressive 42% of our total transportation volume in 2023.
Moreover, in Q1, we received the last of our 10 newbuilding (Amwaj class) IMO2 MRs order. Our newbuilding fleet’s unique design provides us with a significant competitive advantage in terms of cargo volume, lower draft, and wide beam to berth in several ports and lower bunker consumption.
We also continued our efforts in fleet diversification, by adding further J19 (stainless steel) and LR2 vessels. In addition, we focused on maintaining a youthful fleet by divesting aging vessels. As such, we concluded the sale of 4 vessels before dry-docking (NCC Dammam and NCC Haiel during Q1 and, NCC Najd and NCC Hijaz during Q4). The vessels were sold at an opportune time with values well above book values. This supported our cash flow requirements for future fleet replacements and growth.
In 2015, Bahri Chemicals had contracted with Akzo Nobel for the re-coating of 15 vessels with interline coating. This coating became unavailable soon thereafter and Akzo Nobel stopped selling it. The arbitration procedure was concluded this year. As a final settlement, Bahri Chemicals received a significant one-off total payment of USD 23.5 Mn. from Akzo Nobel and Hull Underwriters.
On the commercial side, we further consolidated our COA commitments with several major charterers including International Shipping and Trading Company (SABIC), Waterfront, GHS, Sipchem, and ATC
Our efforts reflected positively on our financial performance. Year-end revenue reached SAR 2,723 Mn. as compared to SAR 2,058 Mn. in 2022, representing an increase of 32%. Net income stood at SAR 797 Mn., as compared to SAR 375 Mn. for 2022, representing an increase of 113%. We also witnessed a 27% increase in transported cargo, from 13.4 million mt in 2022 to 17 million mt for this year.
32 vessels
DWT of about 1.6 million tons
