PROFILE
PERFECT TIMING FOR MPV CONNECTION BY CARLY FIELDS
SAL, Jumbo’s Partnership Finds Market Sweet Spot
W
hen Netherlandsbased Jumbo Shipping announced its joint venture with Hamburg’s SAL Heavy Lift, it was greeted with little fanfare. Pre-Covid, partnering up with past rivals was widely accepted as a necessary step for small to medium-sized operators looking to compete in a market where operating margins dipping below breakeven was the norm, not the exception. Which was the environment Jumbo and SAL faced when their management first 30 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com
broached the subject of an alliance in 2019. Fast-forward two years and with the detail agreed, the Jumbo-SALAlliance entered into being in a very different era. Speaking with Breakbulk, Felix Peinemann, vice president of sales shipping at Jumbo, and Jens Baumgarten, managing director at SAL Heavy Lift, acknowledged the fortuitous timing of the joint venture’s launch, with freight rates at record highs and strong demand for multipurpose vessels, or MPVs.
“It’s not a secret that the market is rapidly developing,” Baumgarten said. The scale of growth has, however, been unexpected, he added. “Even the experts were not expecting such a fast turnaround in the markets.” The aboutface was heavily driven by the wind energy renewable market, although the executives note high demand for MPV capacity from across other sectors too. There is another important difference in today’s market, compared with 2019 when the joint venture was first mooted: today, direct buyers, ISSUE 4 / 2021
