China COSCO Holdings Company Limited (COSCO) has reported a loss of RMB 10,495,295,000.
In 2010, the Chinese shipping giant made a profit of RMB 6,785,497,000.
Depending on the RMB to USD conversion being used, in US Dollar terms the loss is between $1.66 billion and $1.75 billion.
In today's announcement the company said there has been a 'significant increase in bunker costs', citing a 38.3% year-on-year average price increase for IFO380 in Singapore.
The state-backed shipper's bunker bills for the year rose more than 34% from RMB 12,771,307,000 to RMB 17,224,808,000, approximately USD $2 billion to $2.7 billion.
The fuel bills accounted for 25.4% and 22.1% of the operational costs for container shipping and dry bulk shipping respectively.
Revenues for the group in 2011 were RMB 84,639,178,000, down 12.3% from RMB 11,848,458,000 in 2010.
COSCO said container shipping revenues saw a decrease of 6.4% in US Dollar terms to $6,411,380,000, despite year-on-year total TEUs carried being up 11.2% to 6,910,041.
Box sector bunker bills rose 36.6%.
In the dry bulk sector, revenues were down some 30% to RMB 22,298,770 from RMB 31,727,366 in the previous year, while fuel costs for the sector rose 31.7% to RMB 6,077,478,000.
Looking ahead to 2012, the Beijing based business said that “In view of the excessive shipping capacity and serious unbalanced regional supply and demand, the international container market of container liners will remain challenging.”
In contrast to Clarkson's February forecast of a 7.7% rise in global shipping volumes, the shipper said "it would be difficult" for Pacific routes to grow more than 5%, despite a partial recovery of the U.S. economy.
Imports to China are expected to increase.
In fleet upgrade news, the total capacity of ships of 8,000 TEUs or above will record a year-on-year increase of 26.3%.
