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Oil and shipping group, Monjasa, has today announced that it has arranged an $80 million credit facility with French international bank Societe Generale S.A.

Commenting on the news in a statement, the company said: "Within the last year, Monjasa has expanded beyond bunkering activities and further up the value chain and into oil trading. By seizing control of the oil products and logistics at an earlier stage, Monajsa is increasing reliability and efficiency of its worldwide physical supply of marine fuels. Engaging into trading of larger oil parcels requires determination on combining distribution, compliance - and not least robust financial capabilities."

Monjasa commenced oil trading in London last year, in the month of June, with an operation headed by Harry Thwaites, a former senior trader at Trafigura.

Speaking at the time, Monjasa Group CEO, Anders Ostergaard, said: "For quite some time now, we have felt a strong wish to move further across the value chain and into oil trading. Right now, our core-business includes bunkering services and physical supply, terminal operations, agency, and ship-owning activities on a global level. However, we still hold great ambitions. With our new finance structure, we are able to finally start moving our own oil parcels, partly to our own operations, but also to third parties across the globe."

Last year, Monjasa Group achieved an increase in net profit of $2 million, or 9.1 percent, to $24 million.

The volume of marine products sold rose from just under 3.9 million metric tonnes in 2014 to over 4.1 million metric tonnes last year, representing an increase of 6.8 percent.

Total revenue between January and December declined by $600 million, or 27.3 percent, to $1.6 billion, down from $2.2 billion the previous year.

Monjasa Group CFO, Kenneth Henriks, remarked in today's statement: "Monjasa has grown considerably over the past years and we have gone from being a regional bunker company to a global diversified trading group. Our financing model is important for this development and decisive for offering our business partners the global services and efficiency they expect. Therefore, we have been very determined to obtain this deal and today I am delighted to introduce a new USD 80 million credit facility arranged by Societe Generale.

"We see the establishment of this new facility as a seal of approval in the robustness of our business model and confirmation of the value of our strong balance sheet, most recently demonstrated in our 2015 Annual Report."

Monjasa has offices in Denmark, UK, US, Panama, Cyprus, Dubai, Namibia and Singapore.