SOL to manage and operate own oil tanker service throughout region

Local supplier of gasoline SOL will be managing and operating the shipping of its product by introducing its own tanker service effective July 2013.{{more}}

Steve Francis, general manager SOL EC Ltd, said on Tuesday, at the opening ceremony of the company’s ship-to-shore safety workshop, this new arrangement is expected to give the company greater efficiency in scheduling products to be delivered to all SOL markets and should reduce, or eliminate altogether, late arrivals.

Late arrivals are one cause for stockouts he said.

“That’s a word none of us in these markets want to hear, stockouts tend to cause chaos and panic in the affected countries,” Francis said.

He described the decision as a positive one, saying that SOL’s directors should be complimented for the initiative.

The ships that currently serve the markets, Francis explained, are owned and controlled by a company known as Shell West, a division of Shell, he said.

“So, they handle all our transportation for fuel — we have decided that it is in our best interest to have greater control of the movement of our products,” Francis told SEARCHLIGHT.

He further explained that the company had, within recent times, expanded its markets and that it was in the company’s best interest to transport its own fuel.

A department has been set up within SOL’s headquarters in Barbados and will be responsible for managing the new tanker operations.

“So, we would be leasing our own tankers and using them across the SOL group,” SOL’s local general manager

said.

“We think that this will increase our efficiency, because the tankers will be dedicated to SOL,” he said. (DD)