In the first half of the year, Stena Group made a loss of more than 360 million euros. That is almost ten times as much as in the first half of last year.
The Swedish ferry operator had to discontinue almost all passenger services in the second quarter due to the corona crisis. In the meantime, services have been resumed, albeit on some routes still less frequently than before the corona crisis.
Freight transport
In the first six months, the number of passengers and cars transported halved. Freight transport remained at a reasonable level with a decline of 11 per cent. Stena spent more than 40 million euros on staff redundancy schemes and other reorganisation costs. The group has sent 950 employees on leave in Scandinavia and 600 in Great Britain. The service between Frederikshavn in Denmark and Oslo in Norway has been permanently discontinued.
A few months ago, CEO Dan Sten Olsson said that many employees on leave would not be able to return, even if passenger transport were to recover. ‘Many cannot be reinstated if times get better. Transporting fewer passengers with a lower frequency of departures is our new reality,’ Olsson said back then.
Slump
The slump in ferry shipping was partly offset by the tanker division, which benefitted from the sharply increased demand for the transport and floating storage of oil, a trend that dominated the market especially in April and May. The result jumped from 74 million euros to 174 million euros.
The offshore division, on the other hand, went into the red due to the fall in oil prices: from a positive result of 17 million euros last year to -58 million in the first half of this year.
This article first appeared in Dutch on Nieuwsblad Transport, a publication of SWZ|Maritime’s publishing partner Promedia.
Picture by HenSti.
