Otto Marine to focus on chartering

OTTO Marine will be focusing more on its chartering business rather than its shipbuilding work going forward, despite delivering a complex vessel earlier this month that highlighted its ship-engineering capabilities.

The Norshore Atlantic, an advanced drilling ship, is said to be the first of its kind to be built by an Asian yard. But instead of leveraging on this milestone project, this vessel is likely to be the last complex shipbuilding order taken by Otto for the near future. The group's yard will instead focus on supporting its chartering business by expanding its own fleet, while Otto's yard in Batam will leverage on opportunities presented by the cabotage market in Indonesia.

"There are no plans for the company to take on these large complex vessels (again), in the near future anyway," Otto chief executive officer Garrick Stanley told The Business Times in an interview.