French testing, inspection and certification company Bureau Veritas (BV) has reported revenue of €1.15bn ($1.4bn) in the first quarter of 2021.
BV said that the figure represented organic growth of 6.6% on the same period of last year.
Its marine and offshore division, which represents just 8% of BV’s total revenue, earned revenue of €94.1m, compared with €94.4m in the first three months of last year.
However, BV said the revenue figure in the quarter that ended on 31 March of this year represented 3.4% organic growth on the first quarter of 2020.
BV uses organic growth, which strips out currency and other factors over which it has no control, to assess the performance of its business.
The classification society experienced low single-digit growth in its marine division's newbuilding orderbook. It said the world orderbook had fallen from 14.8m gt in 2020 to 14.2m gt.
But BV indicated a slight increase in its certified fleet. It has also seen an increase in its certification services, as statutory surveys postponed by the pandemic in 2020 were brought forward to this year.
In a separate development, BV has been appointed by cruise operator Carnival Corp to provide health and safety services to facilitate the return to cruising.
BV will verify the procedures and protocols on Carnival’s ships to manage coronavirus-related risks in port and at embarkation and disembarkation points.
