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A business plan issued by Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc in September reveals that the company was already in the "process" of closing four of its sales offices.

According to the information, sent as part of a proposal to noteholders, Aegean's offices in Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Singapore and St Petersburg were all identified as locations up for "planned closure".

Also included in Aegean's strategy to reduce costs is the exit of bunkering operations in Fujairah (UAE) and Piraeus (Greece) and the reconfiguration of its fleets in Gibraltar and the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) region.

The marine fuel seller also refers to storage cost savings in the US and corporate overhead reductions as part of its overall plan to lower operating expenses.

Referred to as the firm's 'Stabilized Business Plan Overview', Aegean estimates in the document that total annual operating costs would be reduced from $237.8m in 2017 to $186.1m, with EBITDA rising from $52.5m to $65m and gross profit falling from $290.3m to $251.2m.

Annual bunker sales volume in the plan is 11.3m tonnes, based on Q1 2018 annualized volume of 12.1m tonnes and adjusted for seasonality and other factors, whilst the company's 'stabilized' gross spread per tonne is $18.3.

Key assets

In terms of key assets owned by Aegean, the company has 41 owned tankers, with the bunker fleet consisting of 37 ocean-going product tankers and two non-self-propelled tank barges.

The existing debt on its modern bunkering vessels is identified as being $115m, whilst the total appraised value of its ships is said to be $169m.

Aegean has been utilizing two floating storage facilities and also owns onshore storage terminals in Fujairah (465,000 cubic metres), Jamaica and Las Palmas (63,000 cbm), and leases another in Tanger Med (218,000 cbm).