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“Rufinia” is one of the vessels in the Bror Husell Chartering fleet. Photo: Pär-Henrik Sjöström

Bore expands into contract trade
Through the acquisition of Bror Husell Chartering, the shipping company Bore enters the market of industrial shipping. This also means substantial growth of the shipping activities within the Rettig Group.

Last October the Finnish shipping company Oy Rettig Ab Bore acquired all the shares of the Åland-based shipping company Bror Husell Chartering Ab Ltd. For the time being, the former activities of Bror Husell Chartering will continue unchanged under the same name as before. However, Bore will focus on synergy effects and look at how the activities could be co-ordinated in the best possible way.

The acquisition of Bror Husell Chartering means substantial growth of Bore’s activities. A new business area, Contracts of Affreightment (COA), has been established and Bror Husell Chartering’s Managing Director Johnny Husell is in charge of this business.

In addition to the existing offices in Turku (Åbo), which is the company headquarters, and Rotterdam, which focus on operations and management, there is now also an office in Mariehamn on Åland. The Mariehamn office is the centre of the COA business unit.

Bror Husell Chartering operated five dry cargo vessels and two ro-ro vessels when the company was acquired by Bore. In addition to these vessels the fleet consisted of two time-chartered ships.

Now the oldest dry cargo vessel in the fleet, the Finnish-flagged "Midgard" has been replaced by a larger and newer vessel bought from the Netherlands, which is slated for delivery in mid-December. The new vessel is of the same type as the Dutch-flagged "Sabinia" and "Rufinia", which have proved to be very successful in Bror Husell Chartering’s traffic.

The main activity of the COA will be industrial contract shipments. Bore’s

	Kaj Eriksson. Photo: Pär-Henrik Sjöström

Managing Director Kaj Eriksson sees great potential in this area and he thinks that the new resources added by Bore will improve the possibilities to compete for larger contracts and expand the business.

– There seems to be a common trend of consolidation everywhere, explains Mr Eriksson.

He says that the customers grow larger and larger, which means that the shipowners also must grow in order to strengthen their position in the contract negotiations.

– A large number of vessels employed in the contract trade ensure flexibility in shipments and give us sufficient capacity, states Mr Eriksson.
He believes that it is an ideal solution for a company to have its own fleet of vessels, which is complemented by chartered vessels according to the actual market situation.

Perhaps the most important customer in the COA today is the forest industry. The main idea is to offer frequent sailings with smaller vessels to ports that are not included in the networks of the large liner operators but still are important to many customers.

Today the business is not only about carrying semi-manufactured products such as sawn timber.

– We carry large volumes of ready to sell products for the large building materials retail chains and we are increasingly becoming an integrated part of their logistics chains, explains Mr Eriksson.

Interesting car transports
In the past few years, Bore has sold all of its container feeder vessels and smaller ro-ro vessels. When the Husell fleet was acquired, the Bore fleet had only four ro-ro vessels employed by P&O Ferries on the English Channel.

– In the long run the idea is to transfer Bror Husell Chartering’s two ro-ro vessels to Bore’s traditional ro-ro activities, states Mr Eriksson.

One of the vessels, "Transgard", is employed on a long-term contract by the car carrier operator UECC. The vessel was rebuilt into car carrier in winter 2005. This sector is regarded as especially interesting by Mr Eriksson.

– Before the acquisition of Bror Husell Chartering we had discussed entering the car carrier market on several occasions. There is great potential on the Russian market and I think that direct shipments to St Petersburg will become increasingly important. Car feeder vessels with a high ice class are needed in that traffic.

Attractive ro-ro market
For the time being, Bore has no activities in container feeder traffic after selling its three Dutch-flagged feeder vessels. According to Mr Eriksson, however, this does not mean that Bore has left this market for good.

– We entered the market when it was weak. Soon after that it boomed and our vessels became highly sought after. Therefore we decided to sell them.
He believes that container feeder traffic to ports in the Baltic Sea area requires fast and ice-strengthened vessels and says that Bore may well re-enter the business when the time is right.

Bore’s traditional core activity ro-ro shipping is still of great importance. It is also most likely the next activity to be developed. In the ro-ro sector Bore is acting only as a shipowner and all vessels are on charter to liner operators. This will continue in the future.

Mr Eriksson believes that there will be a shortage of modern ro-ro tonnage on the market within a few years, as there has not been a sufficient number of newbuildings.

– This is an attractive market for us and we are looking at several options for expansion, he says.

//Pär-Henrik Sjöström