Exmar Brand Guidelines: Antwerp’s Gas Shipper, Tango FLNG and an Ammonia-Fuelled Carrier

A shipyard spin-off of 1980.

Exmar is a Belgian shipping and gas infrastructure group based in Antwerp. Dutch Wikipedia dates its creation to 19 December 1980, as a spin-off from Boelwerf, the shipyard at Temse on the Scheldt, and describes it as providing transport and other services to the oil and gas industry. It is controlled by the family of Nicolas Saverys through the holding company Saverex.

The group has three activities, according to the same source. Shipping covers carriers for liquefied natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, ammonia and petrochemical gases; in 2020 the fleet numbered 34 specialised ships and floating offshore units. Infrastructure covers floating liquefaction and regasification units and two accommodation barges, Nunce and Wariboko, held in joint venture. Services covers ship management, travel and BEXCO, a maker of synthetic mooring, towing and lifting ropes for offshore, maritime and industrial use. Dutch Wikipedia notes that a large part of the group’s result comes through associates and joint ventures.

Ammonia is a long thread. In June 2026 Exmar took delivery of the midsize gas carrier Antwerpen, developed with HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, the engine designer WinGD, Nord Gas Solutions and the classification society Lloyd’s Register. Exmar calls it the first oceangoing vessel powered by a dual-fuel ammonia engine; it can carry up to 46,000 cubic metres of ammonia or LPG and is the first of four sister ships, each named after a Belgian city. The company says it has four decades of experience carrying ammonia and other liquefied gases.

Tango and the floating LNG business.

Exmar’s floating LNG work is what places it among floating production owners. Its liquefaction barge Tango FLNG, 144 metres long, was delivered from a Chinese shipyard and commissioned in Argentina in June 2019, MarineLink reported in October 2020. It began a ten-year contract with the Argentine energy company YPF on 14 September 2019, processing gas from the Vaca Muerta field, and exported its first cargo in November 2019. The contract did not last: in October 2020 Exmar and YPF settled a dispute over the charter, which was ended in return for a settlement payment, and the unit became available for other projects.

The next client was Eni. In September 2022, Reuters reported via MarineLink, Exmar closed the sale of Tango FLNG to the Italian energy group for its gas development in the Marine XII block off the Republic of the Congo, where activity was planned from the second half of 2023. At the same time Exmar agreed a ten-year charter with Eni for Excalibur, then its only LNG carrier, to be converted into a floating storage unit for the same project, and its regasification unit was chartered for the LNG terminal of Gasunie at Eemshaven in the Netherlands.

Exmar has stayed in the field as an operator and designer. In February 2026 it was chosen to run marine operations and maintenance for Cedar LNG, a floating liquefaction project at Kitimat, British Columbia, majority-owned by the Haisla Nation in partnership with Pembina Pipeline, whose unit was then under construction at Samsung Heavy Industries; Exmar said its teams would be involved from construction and pre-operations onward. In September 2026 Bureau Veritas granted Approval in Principle to an Exmar concept for converting an existing membrane-type LNG carrier, with about 170,000 cubic metres of storage, into a floating liquefaction unit for offshore gas fields in mild conditions, MarineLink reported; the review at that stage covered hull structure and stability, the cargo containment system and the mooring arrangement. Dutch Wikipedia also lists the FSRU Toscana and the FPSO Nkossa II among units managed by Exmar.

Design and documentation.

Companies that own and run floating production units rarely sell to the public, so their identities live in a small set of places: the photograph of a unit at sea, the fleet or project page, and the investor section. The unit is usually the hero image. A floating production, storage and offloading vessel, a floating storage unit or a floating LNG design is shown whole, in open water or alongside an integration yard, often as a rendering before the hull exists and as a photograph once it is on station.

Fleet and project pages do much of the identity work. Units are listed by name, field and country, and many names follow a house pattern, so a list of projects reads as a record of where the company has worked. Counts of units in operation, completed projects and years of operating experience are given as dated figures on “at a glance” pages, and they change from year to year as units are sold, redeployed or retired.

Standardised hull programmes have become part of the story. SBM Offshore describes its Fast4Ward programme as a generic new-build hull with a catalogue of topside modules, and its hulls are numbered in sequence, as with the seventh, MPF7, reported by Offshore Energy in 2026. Programmes like this give a company a repeatable product to show, rather than a series of one-off conversions, and the language around them leans on standard designs, modules and delivery schedules as the companies describe them.

The investor pages complete the picture. Annual and integrated reports, results presentations, shareholder lists and financial calendars sit next to newsroom image libraries, and the same unit photographs reappear across them. For a designer, the useful lesson is restraint: a short corporate name, a consistent naming system for assets, and large, plain images of the units themselves carry most of the visual identity.

A family holding and two takeover bids.

Exmar’s shares have traded on Euronext Brussels, and its controlling family has twice bid to take it private. In April 2023 the family of Nicolas Saverys, which then held 45.21 percent through Saverex, announced its intention to bid for all the shares and end the listing, HLN reported. That first bid fell short of the threshold for a simplified squeeze-out, Riviera reported, though it left Saverex in control of more than 80 percent, according to The Brussels Times.

On 2 December 2024 the Belgian market regulator, the FSMA, suspended trading in Exmar shares ahead of a new announcement, Riviera reported. A second bid was launched in February 2025 with the unanimous support of Exmar’s board. When it closed on 16 April 2025, Saverex and those acting with it held 94.36 percent of the shares, Riviera reported, just below the 95 percent needed for a simplified squeeze-out. Dutch Wikipedia names Carl-Antoine Saverys as chief executive, and Exmar’s announcements of 2026 quote him in that role.

The company presents itself as a gas shipowner and infrastructure developer, and its public announcements lean on named ships and floating units, from Tango FLNG to the ammonia-fuelled Antwerpen, together with the partners, yards and classification societies behind each project.

For a design guide, Exmar shows how a family-controlled shipping group builds an identity around named vessels and floating units rather than a consumer product. Compare SBM Offshore, another owner of floating production units from the Low Countries, and Bluewater, a Dutch FPSO owner. For this guide we use a Scheldt blue, a harbour teal and a gas-flame amber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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