Bunker Holding Lost Around $125 Million From African Onshore Business PSTV Cargo

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Wednesday June 26, 2024

Marine fuels group Bunker Holding lost around $125 million last year from an onshore cargo trading firm dealing in Africa.

The firm shut down its PSTV Cargo operation in the second half of the 2023/24 financial year, a company representative told Ship & Bunker on Wednesday. The operation focused on non-maritime onshore customers.

In its annual report on Tuesday the firm said the operation had been shut down 'by cause of unfavourable market conditions and political instability'.

While some market sources suggested to Ship & Bunker this week that the size of the loss could be as much as $200 million, the company representative said the rough size could be determined from the difference between net profit and pre-tax earnings from continuing operations noted in Bunker Holding's annual report.

With a net profit of $1.7 million and pre-tax earnings from continuing operations of $127 million in 2023-24, this would suggest a loss of around $125.3 million from PSTV Cargo.

The timing of the African operation's collapse is unfortunate, coming in the same financial year as Bunker Holding's parent company, USTC, had its subsidiary Nordic Waste file for bankruptcy after a large landslide at a processing facility for contaminated soil.

But Bunker Holding has seen historically high profits for several of the financial years since the IMO 2020 transition, and even a loss of this size is unlikely to cause it long-lasting financial problems.

Ship & Bunker News Team
To contact the editor responsible for this story email us at editor@shipandbunker.com