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COLUMBIA SHIPMANAGEMENT I PROFILE

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“Ship management excellence comes with hard-headed price-benefit expecta-tions, with quality ship owners now putting increasing emphasis on cost cuttingand efficiencies,” said Demetris Chrysostomou, Marketing Director of Cyprus-based sector leaders Columbia Shipmanagement. Report from Colin Chinery.

FOR COLUMBIA, IT’S ASIA SPECIFIC

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The New Year bid by Chinese shippinggiant, China Cosco Holdings for a majoritystake in Greece’s largest seaport, Piraeus,combined two calculations high in theforward thinking of Cyprus headquarteredColumbia Shipmanagement – Asia’s continuing dominance as global growthmagnet and Greece as sluggish Europe’sbest bet.“Asians are becoming owners, bigger and

stronger, while in Europe it’s probably onlythe Greeks who are growing substantially,”said Marketing Director Demetris

Chrysostomou. “Europe was a lot harderhit in the global economic crisis, and whilewe are still developing new business inEurope the ship management growth per-centages are obviously growing a lot faster inAsia. From a ship management perspectiveAsia is still the growth market.”

China the MagnetChina in particular is a market thatexcites Columbia Shipmanagement,a business which in three decades hasgrown to become a leading force in its

sector. And with the expansion of its newoffice in Shanghai and a new joint ventureon crew management, the Limassol-head-quartered enterprise is capitalising onthe opportunities in China’s growingshipping traffic trade.“China is a big market and many are

finding it difficult to get quality crew there,”said Mr Chrysostomou. “While we had beenrelying on third party agencies, now wewill bring our crew under our Columbianame umbrella in China; part of both ourexpansion in China and efforts to ensure

we continue to provide our clients withhigh quality crew in sufficient numbers.”With a portfolio extending across full

management, crew management and newbuild supervision, CSM is part of SchoellerHoldings that has evolved into a powerful anddynamic organisation incorporating shipowning and ship management companiesas well as liner services, hotel operatingcompanies and other investments. Founded by Heinrich Schoeller who had

set up Cyprus’s first ship managementcompany six years earlier, Columbia

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Shipmanagement was established in Limassolin 1978 since when it has risen to becomea leading force through an uncompromisingcommitment to quality and efficiency.The full management service includes

every operational aspect from qualifiedtechnical support to an unparalleled crewmanagement package designed to relieveowners of the workload related to themanning of their vessels. For crew man-agement, Columbia maintains its owncrewing offices in eight countries world-

wide and is further complemented by a fewwell selected and highly professional thirdparty agents.

Crewing Challenges“We see that in the long run there will beshrinking numbers of crew from traditionalareas like the Philippines, Eastern Europeand so on, so we are developing new mar-kets and see that we can deal with thedemands that will come in the future for providing quality crew from new

markets. And if you are not in there at the beginning, you might find people inthe future but you will have a problemwith quality.” Columbia Shipmanagement – “the

name you can depend on, meeting andsurpassing the expectations for qualitymanagement of vessel assets” – has acurrent estimated fully managed fleet of280 and a crew managed fleet of 100. Withmajor oil companies prominent clients,CSM is one of the biggest tanker f leet

managers. “More than 50 per cent of thevessels we manage are tankers – a reflec-tion of the service levels and quality youneed to perform at. It says a lot about us,”added Mr Chrysostomou. CSM was among the first ship managers

and is now one of the largest. “From the per-spectives of history, experience, quality andreputation, we have a competitive advantageover a lot of the newcomers and smallercompanies. Our volumes enable us to bequite aggressive in our contracting, withthe result that our clients receive the pricebenefits of the economies of scale – again a competitive advantage over the majority of ship managers.”

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But CSM is more than a conventional shipmanager. “We are a manager that belongsto a group involved in related services suchas ship owning, shipping lines, dry and wetshipping pools and bunker servicing, whichmeans we can provide our clients withadditional services beyond traditionalship management. And our new buildingexpertise – over 370 ships over the yearsacross the world, many in China – givesus an experience very few ship managerscan lay claim to.”

Cruise management is another CSMspeciality. Operating in this growing nichesince 1982, it was given separate brand defi-nition in late 2014 operating out of Hamburgand Cyprus under the brand ColumbiaCruise Services. “We now have six vesselsunder full management of which two havecome in since branding. A dedicated cruisemanagement service has been a positivedevelopment that’s helped us become vis-ible in the cruise market and I think thefuture development will be quite strong.”

As ship managers, CSM wants to performat a certain level, said Mr Chrysostomou. Butquality now comes with increasingly hard-headed price expectations. “You have to haveclients who also want to perform at that level.But because some of the sectors remain verybad – the bulk and container markets forinstance are going through a terrible time –even the quality ship owner is putting a lotof emphasis on cost cutting and efficiencies. “What clients are looking for is the

scale of value a ship manager can add to

their business. Can we help them becauseof the economies of scales and contractvolumes that we have; can we save themcosts on technical and pro-active efficien-cies for example, running ships more effi-ciently and economically?

Added Value the Acid Test“In this current market, quality cannotcome at any price. Owners are looking at saving costs and what value the shipmanager can bring ultimately to theirbusiness and its success.”Columbia Shipmanagement, said Mr

Chrysostomou, has achieved its currentposition as a world leading ship manage-ment company by being true to the mandate

of founder, Heinrich Schoeller – to pro-vide its clients with the highest standardof professional management.“The most important point for us is our

partner relationship with our clients andthe transparency of the services we pro-vide. Our aim always is to add value andgrowth to the client organisation.“We have always been quite selective in

the people we do business with, and this hasproved its worth in these difficult times. Shipmanagement is definitely a growth business,and I think the trick going forward is to growat a calculated pace with a careful selectionof our clients and the quality of the shipswe manage, with no compromise on thequality of service we provide.” n

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