Mercantile Shipping Company, a listed company that once had Sri Lanka’s biggest fleet, has taken delivery of the first of a pair of new buildings it ordered built by a Dutch yard.

The company said in a stock exchange filing that it took delivery of the multi-purpose cargo vessel from Bodewes Ship Yard in the Netherlands.

Financial results for the June 2009 quarter filed with the stock exchange filing showed it made a modest profit solely on chartering a vessel overseas with no voyages in Sri Lankan waters.

Group net profit for the June 2009 quarter was 3.6 million rupees, down 71 percent from12.2 million the year before while revenue halved to 73 million rupees.

Mercantile Shipping Company was for long was the island’s biggest ship owner with a fleet of almost a dozen vessels at one time.

It deployed many of its vessels to supply the northern Jaffna peninsula when it was cut off from the rest of the island as Tamil Tiger rebels controlled the land route.

Government forces defeated the Tigers in May and the need for ships has fallen with the re-opening of the land route.

The company stock exchange filing showed it did no business within Sri Lankan waters in the June 2009 quarter compared with a 38 million rupee gross profit from local business the year before.

Mercantile Shipping’s profit came from international business carried out outside Sri Lankan waters.

The stock exchange filing showed a gross profit of 17 million rupees in international business in the June 2009 quarter compared with a loss of 1.8 million the year before.

Mercantile Shipping in recent years has been selling off or scrapping its ships as they were old and costly to operate and ordered new vessels to be built.

The company’s stock exchange filing also its existing ship, Safmarine Soyo, has been given on a new charter but at a lower rate than earlier because of the depressed state of the charter market.