“The pressure is on in the bulk carrier market. With today’s high rates, planning maintenance, ensuring spare parts, getting a slot for repairs at a yard when ’all the yards’ want to go into newbuilding, and then the logistics of running vessels are a challenge! Can you imagine for instance a day’s off-hire at $ 50,000?” Anglo Eastern’s Chief Executive Officer Peter Cremers talks to us about operating in a hot market at the company’s Hong Kong headquarters.

“We are prepared, and by that I mean that we have to store more spare parts and, together with the crew and class, be more proactive than we normally would be in doing preventive maintenance and planned maintenance. We have good relationships with yards and this is an important focus area for us – maintaining good relationships.
“The average age of our Capesizes is only four years, so the repair needs are not all that critical as long as we do our best to stay away from any unforeseen incidents. We have been building Capesize vessels for the past 20 years; in general terms these vessels are fine to operate, but it is important that our crew knows the vessels inside out when it comes to matters such as berth loading, adjacent loading and also any lightering. The importance of really knowing how the hull behaves is essential, and to us the DNV Hull Structure course that we have been running for AESM superintendents has proved to be quite helpful,” says Cremers.
“The Panamax bulk carrier,” continues Cremers, “is the workhorse of the industry. We have some 25 Panamax vessels under management. Another type of vessel that we have many of is the geared bulk carrier/laker. Here Fednav is a major client for us. Here too the availability of spare parts for cranes is an essential success factor for us and it’s not always that easy to get hold of them. This applies specifically to wires, hydraulic equipment and electrical components. Cranes must be operational at all times as, inherently, a geared bulk carrier calls into smaller ports and terminals where they are dependent on the functionality of the crane. These vessels also carry many different cargoes and the cleaning of tanks is also an important operational issue.
“We are strong in the open hatch market in association with Saga. These are open hatch vessels with gantry cranes based on the paper trade.
“To summarise I would like to stress that we are very happy with the strong market, but we face challenges that were not so visible in the past. A day or two of off-hire did not use to be a big deal, but today that is very much a big deal. We find the times very inspiring,” concludes Peter Cremers, before rushing off to his next meeting.
The Anglo Eastern Group was established in 1974 with a primary focus on the provision of ship management, crew management and newbuilding consultancy services to third parties worldwide. Today it has 7,500 professional crew members and over 500 full-time shore-based staff positioned globally to assist owners with their needs. Anglo Eastern also operates a training facility in Mumbai to ensure quality seafarers who also remain within the Group throughout their career at sea.

Date: 30 January 2008