Hong Kong: Shipmanagers have to diversify to survive, argues the head of Evangrove Shipping in today’s Maritime CEO interview.
Captain Rohit Shrivastava is the boss of the Hong Kong and India-based shipmanagement firm. He says, “Providing just shipmanagement is now an unviable proposition.” “To keep margins to sustainable limits like most managers we too have ventured into various other aspects and services, although still by and large margins get squeezed by 20-30% at what it was few years back,” Shrivastava comments.
Shipmanagement and crew management remain the core work for Evangrove but it has diversified of late to offer chartering, shipbroking, ship inspections and bunkering services.On top of that Evangrove has recently started offering layup services from unconventional positions from where ships can be deployed in a shorter span of time to a trading route.
Evangrove was founded in Mumbai in 1995. It opened up in Hong Kong last year. On possible consolidation in the shipmanagement sector, Shrivastava says the industry will remain fragmented in the coming years.“There are no signals of better margins or qualitative gains by consolidation in the management sector,” he reckons. [03/12/13]
