Athens: Senior management from one of Indonesia’s oldest shipping lines has been at Posidonia all week looking to order a series of multipurpose ships. The company, Bumi Laut, however will not be placing these orders on home soil because Indonesian yards are too expensive and too slow, ceo Jaka Singgih tells Maritime CEO today in our regular Friday shipowner slot.
Bumi Laut is a very diverse family-run company with interests in bulkers, tankers, boxships, tugs, barges, warehousing and a sizeable agency business to boot.
Owned ships at present include seven small tankers on charter to Pertamina, four small bulkers trading in Southeast Asia and a box fleet under the brand Fortune Lloyd which trades domestically.
Singgih, the third generation at the helm of the line, reveals he is in the market for a series of MPPs, ranging in size from 8,000 dwt to 15,000 dwt, and he is indiscussions with yards in China, South Korea and Japan over the order – but pertinently not with Indonesian shipbuilders.
“Indonesia is too expensive to build and takes twice as long to complete,” he says, adding: “Indonesia has ambitions to build ships. Ambition is good, but the government needs to do more to help.”
Singgih, a member of parliament for 10 years through to 2009, says the government should help by handing out soft loans, making it easier to import key equipment and easing immigration rules so foreign expertise can work at local yards.
Singgih’s son, Jay, is in Athens with his father. Now 28, Jay has risen to COO-level at the group and is being for the top job. However, that will not happen too soon, his father, a shipping veteran stresses. “Maritime is an industry that requires experience, passion and knowledge,” he reckons.
