Date:22/08/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/08/22/stories/2007082255131800.htm

Business

Shreyas buys ship from ST Marine

P. S. Suryanarayana

The vessel is priced at S $41.5 m
ST Marine to deliver three other vessels

SINGAPORE: Riding the wave of “a booming India,” a shipping company with Indian and international stakes, has acquired and deployed a state-of-the-art container vessel built by a Singapore firm.

This reflects a new form of corporate-level engagement between Indian-origin and Singapore entities.

Singapore-based Shreyas World Navigation Pte Ltd, the ship-owning subsidiary of Transworld Holdings Ltd, on Monday announced the purchase and deployment of this newly-built container ship. Transworld Group, with its corporate office in Dubai, has operations in Mumbai and several countries.

Designed and constructed by Singapore Technologies Marine Ltd (ST Marine) for a price line of Singapore $41.5 million, the vessel is being operated by Orient Express Lines (OEL), the ship-operating wing of Transworld Group.

ST Marine President, See Leong Teck, said the “partnership” with Shreyas would help the Singapore firm reach “greater heights” in the domain of maritime industry.

And, as a niche-enterprise based in Singapore, OEL functions as Transworld’s “central feeder hub,” and it has deployed the new vessel on the Bangladesh-Malaysia-Singapore sector. ‘OEL Singapore’, the Transworld Group’s first-ever newly-built ship, has already done four voyages since its purchase and deployment in June this year.

Mahesh Sivaswamy, Managing Director of both Shreyas and OEL, said on Monday that the sophisticated shallow-drafted container vessel, with a speed of 19.3 knots, was designed and built to render “a superior service” to the shipping community.

Three other vessels — all of the similar category and named, respectively, as OEL Blessing, OEL Dubai and OEL India — would be delivered by ST Marine by June 2008, beginning from next month.

Transworld Chairman, Ramesh S. Ramakrishnan, said the group was not a technological partner of ST Marine, but the two engaged each other on some aspects as the ship design and other parameters.

The group’s overall business was now largely driven by the boom in the Indian economy.