logical logistics

LOGICAL LOGISTICS
BBC Chartering & Logistics is one of the world’s leading carriers of heavy-lift and project cargoes,
operating a fleet of more than 140 multi-purpose vessels and offering global assistance through
some 25 regional offices. Senior Vice President, Mr Raymond Fisch, talks to Eric Payne about
the global shipping market and the reasons why Asian growth is forcing European and North
American players to reassess their previously dominant position in the world. ‡
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VAN DOOSSELAERE & ACHTEN
BBC Chartering & Logistics was first
established in Bremen, Germany, as the
chartering branch of the two entrepreneurial
ship-owning family businesses Briese &
Bischoff. Indeed, this is what the letters
‘BBC’ actually stand for: Briese Bischoff
Chartering. In 1999, the headquarters
of BBC moved to the city of Leer in
Ostfriesland, a rural region in north-west
Germany, also home to Briese Schiffahrt.
At the outset, BBC Chartering had an
operating fleet of some 10 vessels. Soon,
however, the need to grow its business
internationally became the core task of
the company, Mr Fisch informs us.
“Focusing on the trans-Atlantic market, the
first hub of our international expansion
strategy was Houston, where we established
an office in 1998,” he remarks. “This office
was initially established via an exclusive
agency agreement, and later, in 2001,
through a joint venture which already carried the BBC name. Later, in 2008, BBC
Chartering assumed full ownership of
US operations.
“International expansion continued over
the years with the opening of offices in St.
Petersburg and Brazil in 2002, and Chile
and South Korea in 2003. With growing
shipping demand in the Far East, in 2004
a joint venture was formed between Clipper
and BBC with a mission to develop the
Asian market under the brand name
APC (Asia Project Chartering), based in
Singapore. This soon led to the opening of
offices in Dubai, Shanghai and Melbourne.
In 2009, the initial JV was dissolved and
BBC Chartering assumed sole responsibility
to continue to operate the APC offices and
activities that were started under the JV.”
Another important highlight in the history of the company was the founding of
Caytrans BBC in 2006, a JV which focuses
on serving the Caribbean market, based out
of New Orleans. “Without going into too
much detail,” Mr Fisch continues, “other
market expansions have followed over the
years, leading to the opening of new offices
and the introduction of numerous liner
services. Today BBC Chartering operates
a world-embracing network of liner services, with 25 regional offices. Still
growing, the BBC operated fleet now
counts over 140 vessels, with the latest
addition being 20 ex-Beluga vessels that
joined this year, after the demise of our
Bremen-based competitor.” ‡
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In Antwerp, the port with the biggest centrality index in Europe,
'van Doosselaere & Achten (VDA)' represent BBC Chartering,
with 'VDA Port Services' as their dedicated port agency. It
organises the physical agency of the vessel, checks the vendors,
takes sales & marketing of the services and protects the overall
interests of their principals. Antwerp is an ideal location
because there is a complete network of train, barge and road
connections, which makes it easy, cheap and fast to bring the
cargo from inland locations to the port.
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49
Mr Raymond Fisch,
Senior Vice President
Local partnerships, international service
As part of the Briese ship-owning group of
companies, BBC Chartering enjoys close
collaboration with group partners, but also
maintains a distinct focus on respective core
competences regarding the multi-purpose
and heavy-lift shipping business. “The
responsibilities for building, financing,
buying and selling of vessels and the maintaining and crewing of vessels lies with the
ship owners from which we charter in our
tonnage,” Mr Fisch explains. “As BBC
Chartering we focus on the marketing
and operating of tonnage under our brand
– and with our current network of 25 offices,
counting about 300 employees, our clients
can reach us almost anywhere in the world.
Besides the chartering of tonnage, our main
hubs – Leer, Houston, and Singapore –
deliver services such as technical planning,
voyage and vessel operations and agency
services to the local offices, whose primary
focus is to manage local demand.”
Collaboration with local and international
partners also plays an important role in BBC
Chartering’s ongoing success and expansion.
In 2010, BBC Chartering entered into a
co-operation agreement with its joint v
enture partner, Teras Cargo Transport –
establishing Terras BBC Chartering –
for the ownership of motor vessel BBC
Houston, which now carries the US flag.
Also, working with this partner, BBC
Chartering recently introduced a new
Papua New Guinea service, featuring
modern heavy lift and Ro-Ro tonnage on a
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regular service (twice a month) calling at
Motukea, Laem Chabang, Singapore and
Cigading. It is believed that this service
might be especially appealing to clients
in the oil & gas industry in this region.
‘Partner of choice’
In overview, BBC Chartering offers vessels
for three core types of services: tramp shipping, affreightment and liner services. “We
are strong in all three fields and are committed to the ideal of maintaining a healthy
balance between all three, with respect to
capacity and employment,” Mr Fisch notes.
“One area of specialisation can be seen in the
leading role we play as a carrier for the global
wind industry. Undoubtedly, we have benefitted from the leading role that European
maufacturers have played in producing
onshore turbines for wind power projects all
over the world. To this end, in 2007, we
established a wind-power division based in
Aarhus, Denmark, especially to cater for the
specific demands of this client group. These
needs can be characterised by the securing of
large shipping volumes over a longer period
of time, and by the development of highquality, competitive handling concepts that
allow damage-free and fast delivery of these
high-value items. We ship hundreds of wind
turbine components – towers, nacelles and
blades – for major clients all over the world,
while also working on the development of
individual transport concepts, because
stowage and handling of these components involves detailed procedures. As
you can imagine, adequate handling of
valuable items takes special care.”
“Moreover, as heavy-lift experts in the
‘middleweight’ segment, we provide
marine transportation to any client group
for which we can offer competitive services.” Today a large share of our capacity
is working on energy-related assignments,
for the oil & gas industry and the power
generating industry – both for conventional and renewable power. Other classical segments we serve include general
cargoes for mining, civil engineering,
machinery, metals, vehicles, yachts, and
bulk. As for specific customers, we talk to
industrial clients directly, to local brokers
and international freight forwarders.
Competition does not stop at certain
doorsteps either, which means that we
work with each client individually to see
what is needed to become their partner
of choice.”
As part of its market expansion strategy,
BBC Chartering constantly strives to cap-
italise on its highly competitive and proven
service offering by approaching new markets. “Our aim is to play a permanent and
sustainable role in every region we enter
into,” Mr Fisch outlines. “As such, I would
like to highlight that, in today’s world, the
emerging markets – Latin America, India,
and Asia, with China as the driving engine
– play a vital role in driving our shipping
demand. Hence, we are trying to undertake
every effort to participate in these opportunities. Still, taking a step back, we have
to be aware that the starting point of any
future analysis is less pure economics, but
rather the development of the geopolitical
environment. This has a significant influence on our decision making.”
Nurturing talent
The foremost priority for the company,
as far as Mr Fisch is concerned, in terms
of securing its future, has been BBC
Chartering’s ability to attract and retain
talents from all over the world which have
adopted and, in turn, expanded upon the
BBC Chartering idea. “These are people that
are aware of the central role and responsibility that we, as a shipping company,
assume in the global economy,” he affirms.
“Although many other factors can be con- ‡
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sidered supportive, my belief is, when we
look at the driving energy behind our success, it all starts with people who take
action. It is my belief that the strong
entrepreneurial spirit within our organisation has always helped to connect our
people, uniting us across cultures, and I
hope this will continue for many years to
come, as we undertake efforts to continuously foster communication and cross-cultural exchange as the connecting glue
within our network. We are very proud
of the fact that it is people who build the
core of our brand, which claims that we are
‘anchored by excellence’. Only our clients
can decide whether or not we serve our
purpose. And I am convinced we will be
able to continue doing so by following this
claim, demonstrating our quality attitude
in every aspect of the service we provide.”
Indeed, the same spirit is reflected in the
company’s approach to training and career
development. “Everything here is initiativebased,” Mr Fisch attests. “There is no
training catalogue like you might find at a
very large multinational company, which has
an entire division dedicated to nothing else.
Here, employees are encouraged to foster
an entrepreneurial approach. When I was
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giving a talk at an university recently, one
of the lecturers asked me, ‘what does the
company do for students with respect to
master’s degrees or internships?’, and my
response was to say that, if the goals of the
individual are shared by the aims of the company, anything is possible. Anyone who can
find a market for their thoughts is welcome
to try to implement their idea.”
Empowering individuals obviously also
feeds into the company’s approach to quality
and safety. “Very simply stated, we have to
follow an institutionalized approach. We
cannot leave our responsibilities for people,
ships and cargoes up to chance, nor can we
provide for all contingencies that may occur.
Our quality management describes and
monitors processes that matter for the
business and hence support customer satisfaction. We avoid nurturing paper tigers
with no clear benefit for customers or
internal process stakeholders. Regarding
safety, we work with clients, many of them
stock listed corporations, possessing elaborate risk management systems. For us, this
means that we cannot afford to be less
demanding on our own procedures.
We have installed processes that clearly
assess risks in the preparation phase and,
in case an (unlikely) incident occurs, a rigorous investigation process will commence
and not come to a halt until we have identified the safety gap that we are able to close
by adopting those processes respectively.
We have learned that it is imperative to
work closely with clients early on, so as to
identify and close any such gaps before
they have a chance to show.”
“Similarly, our environmental policy
is based on sharpening awareness so that
we are better able to influence behavior,
which, on a general note, is often characterised by unconscious automatisms, habits
we hardly reflect. There is always something
we can do better in this respect. Little things
and bigger things. In the absence of an
‘objective optimum’, sometimes all it takes
is a change of perspectives that allows us to
assess a solution differently and come to
alternative action. It takes continuous ‡
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LEEWARD AGENCY
Just prior to the millennium Leeward Agency was introduced to BBC Chartering,
we were asked to Identify a potential port and terminal in east Texas where
BBC could load a heavy lift project cargo. It became very apparent to us that
BBC Chartering was a dynamic company very capable of performing at the
highest level in the project market. The years that have followed have only
solidified that opinion in what now has become historical fact. BBC has the
people and the fleet to service the heavy lift project market on the global level.
Several years ago a respected chartering broker put it best when he described
BBC Chatering as “an acorn that grew to a mighty oak tree”. Simply put they
are industry leaders and we are ecstatic to be part of their team.
effort to create opportunities where we
bring this back on our agenda, in the office
and outside, on board our vessels. We work
together with local maritime schools and
maritime competence centres and take the
opportunity to discuss such ideas. A small
recent success was our ‘go to work by bike’
initiative, which many employees signed
up for.”
Entrepreneurial endeavour
The general approach of BBC Chartering
is to focus firmly on its core business. “This
is what we believe delivers the highest value
to our clients,” Mr Fisch asserts. “In our
view, too much diversification in our type
of business compromises competitiveness.
Shipping as a business has been around for
roughly 5,000 years. Whatever it may look
like, it has and always will be driven by the
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transport needed to promote economic
development. As such, it has always
played a central role in the global
economy. If you look closely at the economics behind it, it has never really changed
either. It is often cited that today’s maritime
laws and shipping documentation go back
to the ‘Mesopotamian Maritime Code’
and the principles of the ‘Roman Bill of
Lading’, respectively.
“Innovation is an important topic that
can happen on many levels. Now,
speaking for BBC Chartering, this mostly
concerns market innovations, meaning
the development of trade routes/markets
that, at the end, support our free trading
economy. Of course, such innovations
have to follow regulatory issues not forgetting the financial framework in which
they are embedded. It is global economic
forces and global economic development
that drive the shipping industry. To that
end, China, is a very good example. This
is a country where, from an initial base of
not very much tonnage, once the demand
was there the industry responded very
quickly to build new tonnage. And now,
China is really an incredibly driving
engine for the entire Asian region. There
is this insatiable hunger for raw materials
and components that need to flow into
the country and, at the same time, as we
all know, a lot of goods are leaving the
country. So, the fact that China is rapidly
evolving as the manufacturing plant for
the entire world is a role that we have to
adapt and respond to, even as it changes
the perception of European and American
predominance in the market and in the
global economy.”
o
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