BBC Chartering

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Mr. Svend Andersen
CEO

What do you think about the market situation now?

Right now, it’s bad. It’s never been as bad as this year. It’s the lowest market we have seen since many many years. I do believe it will change, I hope so, but it’s not going to return back to what it should be. Maybe it will change a bit next year although I must say that I doubt it.

The world is changing, and projects are on the market but a lot of times you see things being cancelled or postponed etc.

I don’t see that there is going to be substantial change in the next 1 or 2 years.

There are also too many ships. The supply and demand are not equal. There is more supply than there is demand and as long as you have that it’s going to be like what we see right now.

Again it might take a couple years, there’s hardly any new buildings coming in the next couple of years, so it will change one day. When we see things level out and the demand continues to increase, we will see a raise in the market.

Tell us about the new cooperation with Jumbo. How is it a win win?

Well it’s a strategic alliance. We can work on projects together, and we can offer the whole scale of vessels with lifting capacities up to 3,000 tons. That brings new possibilities to customers, and we have not been able to do that before. And with Jumbo we have the volume, the resources and the possibilities to jointly work out the best solution for any project.

We are still going to be independent and quote our own things, but the cooperation enables us to work together for some of the bigger projects where we need the combined fleet and capabilities of BBC and Jumbo. That’s the reason for it. I’m convinced it is going to work out well.

Will you merge your sales teams at all?

Not right now. There are some projects where you need super heavy lifts, and the two fleets will work together on these projects.

We have more vessels available, we have the volume, we have the ships, and we can do the smaller things up to 900 tons, that’s where we have the largest fleet. And this is how we can combine our strengths to the benefit of project and customer.

Jumbo is purely tramping right?

They are tramping but Jumbo is very much an engineering company, they do a lot of offshore business where they use vessels for super heavy lifts. It’s not just a shipping company, it’s a specialist company as well. They do very well in that respect.

How many years have you been in shipping and how did you end up in this industry?

I’ve been 45 years in shipping and I got started in this industry by coincidence.

Where in Denmark are you from?

I am from a city called Odense.

Tell us more about how you got started in Shipping.

I started with an apprenticeship for 2 years. I was working in Copenhagen, later I had my own companies in Copenhagen as well.

I started a company together with a partner called Copenship many years ago, in 78’; we split it up in 81′. I then started my own company which was called ‘SA Shipping’ at that time. I did that for many years.

Then things changed in my life and I was with Intermarine in fact, for 2 1/2 years. I was working for Intermarine in the US and I actually wanted to go back to Denmark. But then I worked for Intermarine in Germany for one year, and then in 97′ we started up BBC in Bremen.