Wallem, one of the world’s largest shipmanagers, is not following many of its peers by pursuing aggressive growth, the company’s ceo tells Maritime CEO today.
“We are concentrating on consistent, sustainable and organic growth across all sectors of our broad range of maritime solutions,” Simon Doughty says from Wallem’s Hong Kong headquarters.
The aim is to grow the managed fleet by around 30 to 40 ships a year. It currently has 300 ships under full technical management.
“We are focused on higher value business and the overall customer experience,” Doughty says.
The Wallem boss is adamant the dire freight rate environment is a “good opportunity” for larger shipmanagers.
“In the longer term and to get savings on OPEX, shipowners need to work within a larger fleet structure,” he says, adding: “Outsourcing of services is common practice in almost all business sectors so shipmanagement is no exception and with only about 10% of the world’s fleet currently managed by third party shipmanagers then there is plenty of room to grow.”
In terms of what shipowners are asking Wallem for, Doughty says the perennial top topic is crew-related.
“Crew quality and availability is a main concern, which it always has been,” he says.
Owners also want to know about Wallem’s safety record, near misses and LTIFs.
“We are striving to maintain one of the industry’s best marine safety records with emphasis on compliance and full transparency,” the British national emphasises.
