Oil Terminal, the largest maritime harbour operator in Romania, last year made net profits of 1.4 million euros, up 22.3% on 2003, thanks to the increase in the company’s service programme.
In 2004, Oil Terminal made a 26.3 million euro turnover, 19.5% higher than in the previous year.
Its results are better than initially budgeted and even better than the revised budget figures. Initially they forecast 0.5 million euros in net profits and approximately 20.1 million euros for turnover. Last year’s higher results made the company revise its forecasts upwards to 1.2 million euros for net profits and more than 24 million euros for sales.
“The better than expected results are due to the increase in the company’s service programme, following the increase in oil prices on foreign markets, and to the traffic of oil products,” said Gabriel Daraban, Oil Terminal’s general manager. The harbour operator had initially planned a service programme of 9.8 million tonnes, but in fact achieved over 10 million tonnes.
It signed a contract with LukOil in the second half of last year after the Russian Group reopened the refinery in Teleajen. The influence of this contract on last year’s results was not significant. The contract is expected to account for 10-15% of the company’s turnover this year, however. Oil Terminal’s most important clients are Petrom, through its Arpechim branch and Rompetrol Rafinare.
Oil Terminal specialises in services like reception, storage, oil conditioning and shipping, oil products and liquid chemical products.
It has the highest share of the market of services for importing and exporting oil products and has an oil product storage capacity of 1.7 million tonnes.
Earlier this year, the company announced it was expecting to make 40.7bn ROL in gross profits for 2005 (over 1 million euros at a average exchange rate of 37,500 ROL/EUR). The amount of oil products expected to transit Oil Terminal’s facilities was anticipated to increase to 13.16 million tonnes.
catalin.ciocan@zf.ro