Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), excluding exceptional items, rose to 320.4 million euros ($412 million) from 272.9 million euros in 2007. Vopak guided in January for EBIT excluding exceptional items of about 318 million euros.

The company proposed a dividend of 1.10 euros per share, up 16 percent from 2007.

“Vopak has delivered an almost perfect performance,” said Petercam analyst Thijs Berkelder. “Also for 2009 Vopak is committed to deliver despite the current global economic uncertainties.”

Shares in Vopak, which had slipped about 26 percent in the past year, were up 5.4 percent at 26.91 euros by 0926 GMT, outperforming a 2.2 pct rise in the Amsterdam midcap index .AMX.

The company, which stores and handles both liquid and gaseous chemical and oil products, said for 2009 it expected earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of at least 450 million euros.

It had previously said it expected to achieve its forecast for 2011 EBITDA of 475 million to 550 million euros one or two years early.

“Although we are certainly not immune to any negative economic development, it has not had a material effect on our business up to now,” Vopak’s Chief Executive John Paul Broeders said in a statement.

“We are still experiencing considerable interest in the storage of oil products and stable demand for tanks for storing biofuels.”

Fears that a global economic downturn could hit the company’s pricing and margins have weighed on Vopak’s shares in the past year, but Vopak has remained upbeat on its prospects.

While demand for oil and biofuels storage is holding up, Vopak’s chief financial officer Jack de Kreij said the firm was seeing lower throughput levels particularly in the chemicals sector.

“Even if you have to transport lower volumes of certain chemical products, you still need infrastructure to facilitate that,” he said, adding that fixed fees to use Vopak’s storage meant that this was not significantly affecting revenues.

De Kreij told Reuters in an interview he expected a capacity utilisation rate of around 90-95 percent in 2009, after a rate of 95 percent in 2008.

The firm said it expected projects under construction to add about 2.5 million cubic metres of storage capacity in 2009-2011. De Kreij said the company would carefully monitor the timing of any additional projects in the current economic climate.