As we laid the final touches of last year’s Annual Report, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had shaken us out of retrospecting, and it was difficult to see anything but the present.

2021 was the first full year since we renamed the company “Grieg Maritime Group”, and we have worked systematically to strengthen each of our business units.

For the Grieg Maritime Group, the global lock-down meant significant obstacles in our usual way of doing business.

Improved market conditions and reduced costsin the Group’s main business segment, contributed to a stronger result in 2019, as open hatch freight earnings ended up close to initial expectations for the year.

In May 2017, Grieg Star and Gearbulk established their joint venture G2 Ocean; a customer oriented, worldwide dry bulk shipping company.

On October 19, 2016, Grieg Star and Gearbulk announced their intention to enter into a joint venture: G2 Ocean, in order to establish a highly versatile and customer oriented, worldwide dry bulk shipping company.

Both shipping segments, but particularly open hatch had another tough year in 2017. While the over capacity of vessels in the dry bulk segment continued to weigh on supramax freight rates also in 2017, the earnings trend was positive through the entire year.

The operation had an annualized activity level of 11 supramax vessels in 2015, consisting of a core fleet of 5 vessels on long term time-charter and 4 owned vessels, of which 2 were delivered in 2015.

Presenting a pre-tax result of minus USD 1.3m, Grieg Star’s result for 2014 is slightly lower than expected a year back, but far better than one could fear in a weak shipping market.