Danish group J Lauritzen has reduced its bulker fleet by 15 ships in a weak market.

It said it decided to bring the average number of controlled vessels down to 68 in the first quarter, compared with 83 a year ago.

The market for handysizes was weak throughout the first three months, it said, and the handysize index ended approximately 30% below the level recorded one year ago.

CEO Mads Zacho added: "Global trade tensions together with problems affecting Brazilian iron ore exports negatively impacted dry cargo demand with larger freight rate declines for bulk carriers of all sizes, which in isolation negatively impacted our result for the first quarter”.

Lauritzen also announced that it sold a 5,900-cbm gas carrier in January.

The first quarter net loss was $16.9m compared to $11.8m in 2018.

EBITDA in the first quarter amounted to $12.5m, against a loss of $6.2m in the same period of 2018.

The improvement was due to the adoption of the IFRS 16 accounting standards on leases from 1 January.

Total assets amounted to $642m, versus $462m at the end of 2018.

Gas carriers added

The average number of operated gas carriers reached 31, which was in line with a year ago.

Teekay LNG Partners put seven modern ethylene ships into Lauritzen Kosan’s pool of ethylene carriers from 1 March.

Zacho said: “Our partnership with Teekay LNG confirmed our strong position in the gas carrier industry and earnings for our gas carriers were overall in line with our expectations."

The company added: "The market for small gas carriers saw a minor decline for ethylene and pressurised tonnage in Q1 compared with the same period in 2018, whereas the market for semi-refrigerated tonnage was up by 35% on last year."