First Ship Lease Trust (FSL Trust) faces a critical 2017 with a major loan repayment due and over one-third of its fleet up for charter renewal.

The Singapore-listed tanker and containership company has a six-year amortising term loan maturing in December 2017.

After a scheduled quarterly loan repayment of $10.7m and a further voluntary pre-payment of $20m in March the outstanding loan balance to $192m.