The Carl Büttner shipping company celebrated its 165th anniversary in March with a subtle rebrand, fresh from taking on its largest newbuildings to date – a quartet of 38,000 dwt chemical tankers. The company’s trading outlook has also just expanded from its traditional European focus to go worldwide thanks a tie-up with Ardmore to market four of its other tankers.
Büttner is still a family-owned company today, now in the fifth generation with siblings Maike and Jörn Büttner closely connected to the company as shareholders and on the advisory board. Management responsibility has been delegated to experienced executives outside the family since 2002.
Thorsten Mackenthun, managing director of the Bremen tanker name, has the anniversary out the way and is now watching Covid levels clearly, keen for some form of normality to return to life.
“As a tanker shipping company, we are an energy transporter. For us, it is crucial that the economies of the countries recover and start up again as soon and as quickly as possible. Every lockdown or every extension of a lockdown is an emergency brake on our business activities. We rely on a quick vaccination of the European nations so that the politically responsible people can open the markets again by easing measures and companies can actively conduct their business again,” Mackenthun says.
The newbuilds Carl Büttner took on recently set a new high watermark for the company in terms of environmental performance, outperforming the International Maritime Organization’s EEDI by 33% using HFO or LSFO, Mackenthun says.
The tanker boss is now looking at another trip to the yards with further environmental stipulations high up on the checklist for any further newbuilds.
“The next generation we are thinking about will be at least dual fuel vessels,” Mackenthun says. “We are investigating at all ends which will be the best for our home and future trading areas.”
This article first appeared in Maritime CEO magazine, published this week. Splash readers can access the full magazine by clicking here.
