Lithuania's Limarko places all reefers into Alpha Reefer Transport Pool

Mindaugas Petrauskas, managing director of Limarko Shipping, told BNS that since the middle of this year, the company had placed all of its six refrigerated ships into the transport pool, saying that such cooperation helped ensure more stable revenues. Before that, there had been several Limarko reefers in the pool.

"Permanent cooperation in the pool helps us ensure more stable revenues, because these are shared among all participating ships. If our ship has no cargo for some time, we still receive some revenues," he said.

Petrauskas added that the membership of the pool also helped the company to negotiate better terms from customers and purchase fuel at lower prices.

Other members of the pool include Greece's Laskaridis Shipping Company, Ukraine's ships service agency Yugreftransflot, Norway's Agder Ocean Shipping and Greece's Fairport Shipping.

Limarko Shipping holds a 20 percent stake in Alpha Reefer Transport Pool.

Limarko Shipping has a fleet of 6 reefers and two container ships. The Klaipėda-based company handled 409,000 tons of cargo during the first half of this year, down 13.7 percent year-on-year. In its first-half report, the shipper said that the result had been affected by a decrease in its fleet size.

The main regions in which the company's ships operated were in Africa and Europe, accounting for 63 percent and 21 percent of the total cargo handled.

Limarko Shipping company is quoted on the NASDAQ OMX Vilnius stock exchange.