MSV ‘Botnica’ at a multi-million-euro loss
TS Shipping, the owner of Estonia’s multi-porpuse support vessel MSV Botnica, made a €7.3m loss in the last year. With these latest figures, the company has so far cost the taxpayer €9.7m over the past three years.
Weekly Eesti Ekspress wrote on Wednesday that the Botnica sat moored in Tallinn’s Paljassaare port for months at a time and that this was the reason for the company’s large loss.
TS Shipping’s CEO, Ülo Eero, confirmed that oil and gas companies didn’t have enough work for the Botnica, and that the only hope of finding any were the wind parks planned in the Baltic Sea.
But all of this was changing, and he’d like to point out that the main purpose of the ship was still its use as an icebreaker during winter, Eero added.
The Botnica has been sitting idle for months, mainly due to the impact of the sanctions against Russia and their effect on the oil and gas business in the Baltic Sea area. The alternative plan to put the ship to work for a Russian oil company in the Kara Sea, a marginal sea in the Arctic, didn’t turn into business either.
AS Tallinna Sadam, which has since been through a lot both in terms of negative attention and its economic circumstances, acquired the MSV Botnica in 2012 for €50m.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn