NAVIBULGAR to Build 6 Ships in Bulgaria's Varna

The Navigation Maritime Bulgare company (NAVIBULGAR) is planning to construct at least 6 ships in the ship building yard of MTG-Dolphin PLC in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna.

According to the Bulgarian daily “Pozvanete”, two of the vessels have to be ready by the end of the year. They are part of the six vessels that the company is planning to acquire in 2010.

“It all depends on whether we will manage to find financing or not. For two of them, we are sure we can get credit approval,” said Hristo Donev, captain and CEO of NAVIBULGAR.

The ships have to have a capacity of 17 500 dwt. In Donev’s words, the idea of the company is to create an entirely new fleet of identical ships, which to replace the already depreciated ones.

“We plan to take out of use the ships with capacity of 25 000 dwt and 38 000 dwt,” he said.

According to the captain, the consolidated net loss of BGN 63 M for 2009 was due to the policy for reconstruction of the company.

“The revenue and the financial results from the operations were quite good. The loss, however, formed due to the big amounts of compensations we paid last year. There were also serious payments for unused annual leaves,” Donev said.