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The president of Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc., Nikolas Tavlarios, said on Thursday that the company expects to see "some strong growth" from its bunker trading division.

The marketing and trading division, which was launched in early 2015 shortly after the demise of leading international bunker trading company OW Bunker, in November 2014, achieved sales of 512,000 metric tonnes during the fourth quarter of 2016. The figure represents 12.9 percent of Aegean's total sales (3,954,700 tonnes).

Speaking during the company's quarterly earnings call, Tavlarios noted: "You're seeing our retail sales trading is starting to grow."

On the company's expectations for the future, Tavlarios remarked: "There's certainly a long run rate for that [trading] business. It's in its pretty early days and it's already starting to [show in] our strong results here."

Headquartered in Piraeus, Greece, Aegean's worldwide trading division was launched in 2015 with offices in Piraeus, Singapore, Hamburg and St. Petersburg. This has since been expanded to Dubai, Shanghai, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Seoul.

Jamaica

During the earnings call, Tavlarios also referred to the possibility of developing a storage terminal in Jamaica, where the company operates as a physical supplier in Kingston, Falmouth, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay.

Tavlarios noted: "That's something we examine. Again, we have a really good asset there [in Jamaica] with a very good piece of land which could - you could build a terminal at. It certainly could play well into the 2020 regulation on low sulphur. But we're not really prepared - we're not in a position to discuss any plans yet on that, so very, very early in."

Montreal and Barcelona

Aegean recently wound down operations in Montreal and Barcelona. Commenting on the decision, Tavlarios explained: "We continue to optimize our network and deploy at and in areas of highest return. To meet the evolving needs of our global customer base, we now have operations in over 30 ports worldwide. We will continue to rationalize expenses and monitor and measure progress within markets to ensure appropriate cost rationalization."

Tavlarios added: "We don't bail out on a market just on the basis of what might happen one quarter, we actually look at things in try and spend some time with that cycle. If there's better opportunities for resources, that's what we're going to do, we're going to pull out and deploy them elsewhere."