Oldendorff Carriers is headquartered in Lübeck, Germany. This is a small, historic town known for the marzipan whose logo is the old town portal. Oldendorff sports the prettiest headquarters of any bulk carrier operator and one that reflects the size of its operations.
Sitting on top of a Lübeck Radisson Blue (SAS) hotel, the company lobby is reached by an external glass lift where you have to “walk the bridge” to get in. Oldendorff operates and manages around 340 ships, some of which it owns. No fewer than 277 of them are pure bulk carriers. Each year, approximately 110 million tonnes of bulk and unitised cargo are lifted during some 11,000 calls to ports in around 125 countries.
‘Just add water’ is the company slogan and is explained by Oldendorff having the other ingredients in terms of its history as a German shipowner and its network as one of the world’s leading dry bulk operators. Adding some water to our glasses in the company conference room, Jens Jacobsen, an executive director, and Captain C. Jan Scharffetter, a senior director, also add some flavour to the company: “The current downturn in shipping has not affected our business much at all,” says Jacobsen. “We sold some 92 ships between 2003 and 2008, reducing our owned fleet size from around 100 to 26 ships. These transactions had a value of more than USD 2 billion. We have no newbuilding programme and no new ships entering service where we need to worry about how to employ those ships and crew.
“As there is global overcapacity within the dry bulk industry and a lot of new ships are being ordered by ‘everybody else’, I believe the market will seek to re-establish some sort of balance between supply and demand; this will mean that many of the oldest ships, typically from the late 1970s and 1980s, will be phased out. Ships from the 1990s will still be around, as will all the new ships being delivered today and over the next couple of years,” says Jacobsen. “As for the global financial crisis, I believe this will turn around soon but it will take years before the shipping markets are good again. To achieve a better result for all of us in shipping, the trend will be towards larger ships.”
“Bulk carriers are straightforward ships with proven technology. However, our line of business will also be affected by future environmental requirements. Bulk carriers are among the most efficient means of global transportation. Still, the entire shipping industry will be subject to the demand for reduced emissions. Fuel efficiency is part of the environmental dimension. We must start catering for the future regulations, and we have a vision about what to do here. Part of the solution for the future is to have a well-maintained fleet and it is essential to look at the charterers’ demands and fulfil these. Then our customers can come along with their vetting schemes, which I welcome as the quality of our operations is easy to prove,” says Scharffetter.
Our fleet uses about one million tonnes of fuel a year and we must be prepared for all the new regulations that will be introduced to regulate the CO2, NOx, SOx and particulates emissions to air. We must be able to carry out high-quality, planned actions regarding these, in which we as an industry must change over time – there is no way we can change in a day,” says Jacobsen.
“In this picture, the global refinery capacity is a key success factor when it comes to the industry’s ability to cope with new demands for reduced emissions.” He adds that the same is also valid when it comes to treating ballast water – there should be plants for ballast water discharge and ballast water cleaning.
In spite of selling off ships, Oldendorff still handles one of the largest bulk carrier fleets in the world. The company was established in Hamburg in 1921, and today its fleet carries the following cargoes: steel/aluminium, pipes/windmills, coal/petcoke, ores, grain/agricultural products, fertiliser, bauxite/aluminia, cement/aggregates, concentrates/minerals, forest products/pulp and scrap. Oldendorff ships have completely international crews, with no particular preference for any nationality although there is a crewing office in Ghana. Jacobsen says that the majority of the ships are Liberia flagged and adds that the Liberian registry is very professional. We also have two vessels flagged under Antigua and Barbuda. Professionalism applies to the Antigua flag management as well.