The Pool’s the Thing

While everyone touts the commercial advantages of pooling in terms of market presence, it does also provide unexpected benefits, in these difficult times, in terms of credit, liquidity and working capital. In a pool arrangement, owners charter their vessels to the pool and the pool, as disponent owner, assumes commercial management and charters the vessels out in the market. The immediate benefit of this arrangement is that ships upon entering into a pool are paid for the bunkers on board, with the pool then assuming responsibility for bunkering the member’s vessel. But perhaps more importantly, the pool utilizes its cash flow and credit lines, secured by voyage receivables, to provide working capital to the participants thereby smoothing out the irregular earnings of each member vessel, which are typically paid upon voyage completion.

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