SAILING THE SEAS OF SUCCESS - Swissco Holdings Limited

OUR HISTORY
Our corporate history began with the establishment
of Sea Well Industrial and Ship Supply Company as a
sole proprietorship in 1970. In 1972, our founder Mr
Yeo Chong Lin took over the helm of Sea Well Industrial
and Ship Supply Company after a 19 year career with
the then Singapore Harbour Board (predecessor
of the Port of Singapore Authority). We started as a
marine supply business or shipchandlers. We supplied
commercial ocean-going ships calling at the Port of
Singapore with items ranging from ship spares, stores,
provisions to other consumable goods. Our first office was a rented shop
house in Cantonment Road.
In our initial years, we hired third party boats to convey our supplies or
officers and/or crew of our customers to their ocean-going ships. We then
decided that for better operational control and efficiency, we should own
and operate our own OPL boats. Thus in 1973 we acquired our first OPL boat.
During this period we saw the growth of oil drilling activities in this region
and extended our marine supply services to these oil rigs/platforms.
In October 1975, we incorporated Swissco Offshore to assume the growing
business of marine logistics in the operation of the OPL Boats. “SWISSCO” is
the acronym of “Sea Well Industrial and Ship Supply Company”. In the same
year, we moved to our own office at International Plaza with warehousing
facility in Pasir Panjang. Due to increasing competition and dwindling profit
margin, we discontinued our business in providing shipchandling services in
the 1980s to focus on the more profitable marine logistics business.
We emerged from the recession in the mid 1980’s to become one of the
leading operators of workboats serving the special niche of OPL marine
logistics, including crew change services.
In 1990, we acquired our first offshore supply tug to expand our services
to the regional oil & gas industry. Soon after, we acquired our first barge
to complement our offshore support capability. The robust growth in this
industry during this time created an increasing demand for offshore support
vessels. Consequently, we decided to expand our fleet of tugboats and barges
with the acquisition of two new tugs in 1997 and two offshore support
vessels in 1998.
In 1995, we relocated to 9 Pandan Road. This site occupies approximately
18,000 m2 of leased land from Jurong Town Corporation with a stretch of
approximately 100m long waterfront. This resulted in our Company gaining
waterfront access to base our growing fleet of tugs and barges as well as
shipbuilding and afloat repair activities. It also afforded ample space for our
Company to provide warehousing facilities as a value added service to our
clients. We built our first barge at a third party yard in the early 1990s, and
completed the construction of our first barge at
our own shipyard sometime in the mid 1990s. We
build our own barges for charter and sale and are
constantly renewing and expanding our fleet of
vessels.
In 1996, Swisko Berjaya was incorporated with
other partners in Indonesia to further the reach of
SWISSCO INTERNATIONAL LIMITED_6