Breakbulk Magazine Issue 6

Issue 6 / 2020

The Publication for the Industrial Project Supply Chain Industry

Breakbulk’s Editorial Advisory Board of industry leaders offer their perspectives

Uncertainty for US Ports

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NuScale Making History

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SAL-Intermarine Tie-up

Engineering a Better Tomorrow

Port equipment used by leading ports and stevedoring companies around the world.

Engineering a Better Tomorrow. www.page-macrae.co.nz

IN THIS ISSUE

12

28

Cover Story

38

12 WHICH WAY NEXT?

Breakbulk’s Editorial Advisory Board of Industry Leaders Offer Their Perspectives

22 REGIONAL REVIEW

44 MARKET SPOTLIGHT

US Ports Seek Federal Funds to Stay Afloat

GCC Country Still Expects Grand Development

UNPRECEDENTED UNCERTAINTY

SAUDI’S PROJECT COMMITMENT

28 EMERGING MARKETS

50 CASE STUDY

History in the Making at NuScale

Emirati Mission Conquers Pandemic-related Hurdles

32 ENERGY UPDATE

52 LOGISTICS PERSPECTIVE

High Uncertainty as Oil, Gas Industry Transitions

Covid-19 Choke Points Force Gear Shift

MODULARIZED NUCLEAR

MOVING ENERGY PARTS

34 PROFILE

NEW FAIRWAY

SAL Tie-up Next Chapter for Intermarine

38 REGIONAL REVIEW

NEXT STOP MARS

CRISIS CONTINUITY

56 LOGISTICS PERSPECTIVE ADDED FLEX

deugro group’s Tim Killen Gives his Views on Meeting the Pandemic’s Challenges

SHIFTING SANDS IN THE GULF

Crisis Brings GCC Recruitment Challenges into Focus www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 3

IN THIS ISSUE

76

58

80

82

58 SHIPPING TRENDS COLD FRONT

Arctic Still a Forbidden Frontier

76 INLAND TRANSPORTATION TAKING THE DIGITAL HIGHWAY

Meeting Project Cargo Route and Tracking Needs

4 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

80 PROFILE

TAKING THE PROJECT PLUNGE

Erhardt’s Project Division Focuses on Digitalization

82 MARKET SPOTLIGHT

CHANGE IN CHINA

Competitive Advantage No Longer a Given

Also in this issue 06 EDITORIAL 08 C ONVERSATION 71 B REAKBULKONE 79 THOUGHT LEADER Catch up with the news from the first Breakbulk Europe Digital Event page 64

ISSUE 6 / 2020

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EDITORIAL

TAKING ‘NEW NORMAL’ TO NORMAL? As 2020 creeps towards its conclusion, this is normally the time of year that media works on the post mortems and seeks forecasts for the coming year from industry leaders, insiders and analysts.

After several years of downturn within the industrial project and breakbulk markets, we decided to forego our usual forecast exercise at the close of 2019. We reasoned at the time that, after so many false hopes and failed rebounds, there were only so many ways for participants to say that they were “cautiously optimistic” about the coming year.

So far in 2020, optimism Gary Burrows has become in even thinner supply than toilet paper during the pandemic’s onset. The world has faced so many catastrophes, calamities and crises that a cynical game of Calamity Bingo, with cards populated with plagues, pandemics and disasters, would have to end in a coverall.

As we claw our way to 2021, there’s such a level of uncertainty across industries, governments, trade and business, it’s worth reviving our attempt to draw insights on how anyone might navigate the “new normal” to eventually being just normal.

For this issue, News Editor Carly Fields took a unique approach from conventional forecasts, asking participants to weigh a series of statements anticipating key issues the industry will face in the coming year. Participants agreed or disagreed, and defended their position. The project also included several questions for more straightforward responses.

Breakbulk was fortunate to be able to rely on its panel of 15 current and former Editorial Advisory Board members for responses. This lineup provides a deep and broad advisory forum in terms of industry verticals, global markets, and diversity.

Responses in our cover story, “Which Way Next?,” (page 12) cover topics

6 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

such as digitalization, adapting to the post-Covid-19 operating environment, sustainability, remote working in the wake of the pandemic, climate, 2021 project prospects, public versus private projects, and industry diversity.

These have been key topics that Breakbulk has explored and continues to focus upon in our media and events. Our advisory board members, beyond being key leaders in their industry roles, are also important sources and resources for our industry-leading coverage and analysis.

We welcome thoughts and insights from all industry participants regarding our cover story, or any of our coverage and events content.

DIGITAL SPECIALS

While, due to the pandemic, Breakbulk Europe was not able to be held in person this year, instead Breakbulk Events & Media presented its first Breakbulk Europe Digital Special. The sessions were well attended and an engaged audience was responsive to the webinars and being able to engage industry colleagues.

This issue includes coverage of the Digital Event sessions, on pages 64-70, and the webinars are also available for replay at http://europe.breakbulk.com/page/thedigital-special-2020.

The Breakbulk Americas’ Digital Special will be held Nov. 3-4. You can register to attend the sessions at www.breakbulk. com/page/breakbulk365.

In addition, BreakbulkONE, both the weekly newsletter and on our website, www.Breakbulk.com, includes videos with key participants from the Digital Specials.

CLARIFICATION

In the Issue 5 / 2020 edition, a profile on Bechtel Global Logistics’ Jack Futcher should have said: “BGL, created in 1997, is large scale, with expenditures in logistics services as a portion of the US$16 billion that the company spends in procurement annually. ‘We have many strategic partners that offer logistics services, but our direct self-perform model ensures that in addition to cost, we put safety, schedule and predictability as priorities,’ Futcher said.”

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Gary G. Burrows / +1 904 535 5460 gary.burrows@hyve.group NEWS EDITOR Carly Fields carly.fields@hyve.group DESIGNER Mark Clubb REPORTERS Paul Scott Abbott Felicity Landon Lori Musser Namrata Nadkarni Thomas Timlen Simon West

BREAKBULK EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD John Amos Amos Logistics

Noelle Burke Agility

Dennis Devlin Maersk

Dharmendra Gangrade

L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering

John Hark

Bertling Project Logistics

Samuel Holmes Wood

Dennis Mottola

Global Logistics Consultant

Roger Strevens

Wallenius Wilhelmsen

Jake Swanson

DHL Industrial Projects

Ulrich Ulrichs

BBC Chartering

Margaret Vaughan Consultant

Johan-Paul Verschuure Rebel Group

Frans Waals

Dynamar D.V.

Grant Wattman

Jade Management Group

PORTFOLIO DIRECTOR Nick Davison nick.davison@hyve.group To advertise in Breakbulk Media products, visit: http://breakbulk.com/page/advertise SUBSCRIPTIONS To subscribe, email gary.burrows@hyve.group, or call from inside the U.S. +1 904 535 5460 between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm EST. A publication of Hyve Group plc.

The Studios, 2 Kingdom Street Paddington, London W2 6JG, UK

ISSUE 6 / 2020

CONVERSATION Conversation is a forum of thought leaders, commentaries, letters, editors’ notes and noteworthy social media from Breakbulk’s audience and staff. Join in the conversation – submit your views to gary.burrows@breakbulk.com, or through Breakbulk’s social media channels on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

BECHTEL AWARDED NATRIUM REACTOR CONTRACT Nuclear specialist TerraPower has selected engineering firm Bechtel as its construction partner for development of the Natrium reactor demonstration project.

The advanced sodium fast reactor will be coupled with a molten salt energy storage system, and was awarded US$160 million in initial funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, or DoE, under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.

“Natrium fulfils the industry vision of what a true advanced reactor should be – safer, simpler, easier and less costly to construct, less expensive to operate, and able to provide energy that is competitive with fossil fuels and complementary to solar and wind power,” said Barbara Rusinko, president of Bechtel’s nuclear, security and environmental global business unit.

The construction of the demonstrator system will require the transport of a number of unique outsized components, and the partners aim to deploy two “first-of-a-kind advanced reactor designs” in the next five to seven years.

An artist’s rendering of the Natrium reactor demonstration project.

CREDIT: TERRAPOWER

The project is under development

by TerraPower and technology codeveloper GE Hitachi Nuclear

Energy, as well as specialists from PacifiCorp, Energy Northwest and Duke Energy.

CNCO LAUNCHES SWIRE PROJECTS Breakbulk shipping line the China Navigation Co. has launched its new project cargo business, introducing Swire Projects to provide specialist shipping services to the energy, resource and infrastructure sectors.

The new business will work closely with other subsidiaries of the Swire group to develop an independent global strategy in the multipurpose and heavy-lift segment.

“Working closely with Swire Bulk, a leader in bulk transport and logistics solutions, global project parceling services can be offered to the sector particularly for wind cargo components, 8 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Namir Khanbabi CNCo

tubulars and heavy civil infrastructure material,” CNCo said in a statement.

CNCo said Namir Khanbabi would head the new business, bringing extensive industry experience to the role.

Most recently Khanbabi held

the position of regional director at Zeamarine, and previously was chartering and operations director at AAL Shipping.

Khanbabi will be assisted by Matthias Kremser, as global head of chartering, and Nicki Schumacher, as head of Europe, both based in Hamburg. In addition, Rufus FrereSmith will serve as regional general manager, and lead the Americas team based in Vancouver and Houston.

Earlier this year CNCo said it would separate out its dry bulk shipping activities, establishing Swire Bulk as a standalone firm.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

CONVERSATION

Dangers of Indispensability Knowing When to Say No

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BY MARGARET VAUGHAN

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n the coming months, as companies reopen offices, a reassessment will occur.

I’m not talking about upper management’s reassessment of assets and resources; that, for the most part, has already been done or is in continuum. I speak, rather, of our own reevaluation of our workspace, our coworkers, and our tenure.

The twin blows of the Covid-19 virus and the precipitous drop in oil prices have hit the breakbulk community hard. While there are still projects ongoing and others beginning, a significant number have either been scaled back, postponed, or mothballed entirely.

The resources (read: people) needed for those projects have, quite naturally, become unnecessary and have either been furloughed or dismissed. The assessment is about our own situation; how long will I be kept on, or for those released into an uncertain job market, where do I go from here?

In either case there may be a common reaction and that is to become indispensable. Because of the scale-down in personnel, those remaining employees may decide to take on other tasks in addition to their own, to assume more responsibility for the project’s success, to become the “go-to person.”

In other words, to be seen as indispensable to both the project and to the company, thus ensuring future selection for future work. I am all for multitasking and cross training.

However, being indispensable has one major drawback. Being indispensable means you are unpromotable.

Think about it. Because you want/need to maintain your employment, you have taken WWW.BREAKBULK.COM

on the work of several positions which you will perform to the very best of your abilities. You’ll be seen as versatile, flexible and proficient in several areas. The company will also overlook you for any other positions or promotions. Why? Because you are too valuable where you are, plus you are saving the company quite a bit of money by having one person working the desks of two or three others. For your part, you know you are valued and that your position in the company is secure and they won’t get rid of you. You also know that it’s not right that other people, not nearly as competent as you, are being promoted ahead of you. What you don’t know is why. The answer is that by virtue of your self-created indispensability you have made yourself unlikely to be promoted.

During times like these, it’s important that everyone pitches in and does whatever they can to help the company succeed. If the company fails, everyone is out of a job so you do whatever you can. But as soon as the crisis has passed, you need to speak up and tell the company to unload from you the burden of the additional workload you shouldered during that time. They need to know that as the company’s work increased, so has your workload and you – as good as you are – cannot continue to perform as well as you have. You will be seen as valued, maybe even perhaps invaluable. And promotable. BB Margaret J. Vaughan has more than 30 years’ experience in all facets of supply chain management.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

Remaining Relevant Will the Pandemic Hit the Breakbulk Talent Pipeline?

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panish sociologist Manuel Castells said in The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume I, The Rise of the Network Society, that “the global economy is now characterized by the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital and cultural communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation.”

There is no question that our current global economy and breakbulk community have been presented enormous challenges in a Covid19 world, but within those challenges there lay many opportunities for those willing to adapt, collaborate and leverage a networked society. This includes the graduate talent pipeline for breakbulk.

As industry and academia moved in March 2020 from a brick-and-mortar model to working from home, new models for collaboration were established. The ubiquitous Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting became the connector for work, school and life in general.

Those who could adapt quickly to harness this technology for chatting, meeting, calling and collaborating were able to keep the momentum and sense of purposefulness of both individual and group goals moving in a forward trajectory.

Dating back to the mid-1800s, Charles Darwin reminds us of the importance of adaptability and collaboration. Darwin said: “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

The transformation of how we work or attend college has been compressed in time and space. I would posture that students preparing for a career in breakbulk must use their time expeditiously to adapt to the current environment and must expand their collaborative circles to keep the graduate pipeline intact.

We live in a networked society, which is one where we operate globally in scale, along with the ability to communicate and share information electronically. There exists an opportunity to not only optimize our network, but to expand it during a pandemic, such as Covid-19. Borrowing from social network analysis – which focuses on ties among for example people, groups of people, organizations and countries – “these ties form networks (W. de Nooy, A. Mrvar, V. Batagelj (2005) Exploratory Network Analysis).” It is incumbent on both breakbulk stakeholders and college students to use strategies, such as social media, virtual events and virtual internships, to maintain and expand connectivity to again keep the graduate pipeline intact.

What the current pipeline of students do now will determine how they are positioned for opportunities in breakbulk. Understanding life is not linear, college students should use the current challenges in the global economy to fine-tune their skill sets and adapt to new world realities. Focus perhaps on taking a globally recognized certification, learning another language, mastering new software, enrolling in graduate school and on expanding your network. BB

BY MARGARET A. KIDD

Margaret A. Kidd is program director for the Supply Chain & Logistics Technology department’s Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the College of Technology, University of Houston. She is also leading the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport’s (UK) expansion to U.S. universities and colleges.

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 11

COVER STORY

Breakbulk’s Editorial Advisory Board of Industry Leaders Offer Their Perspectives

2020 has been a watershed year for the industry. Top breakbulk executives share their thoughts on the Covid-19 response and where we go from here as the new year dawns.

AGREE: Murray Cooper: “A Breakbulk Process Management Platform would add value to the execution of EPC (engineering, procurement and construction), renewables, mining, resources, infrastructure and capital projects sector.”

12 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

John Amos: “The industry by its nature is slow to adapt to digitization tools.”

Dennis Mottola: “Unfortunately, too few sector-specific digitalization tools have thus far been developed for managing breakbulk and project cargo work processes and data.

However, I also believe that project cargo shippers have been slow to demand and adopt digitalization solutions.”

Margaret Vaughan: “Most tools available are geared toward ‘big box’ transportation models. Breakbulk

cargo is not ‘routine’ enough, so technology has lagged.”

Dharmendra Gangrade: “Digitalization is still at a nascent stage in the project cargo industry compared with its peers in EPCs or heavy engineering goods, even though the processes and stakeholders are almost the same. This is mainly due to a strong belief among stakeholders that transaction/execution through relationships is more productive than tech-driven processes.

I disagree with that, in fact I believe that transaction/execution with the support of digitalization builds strong relationships based on transparency.”

ISSUE 6 / 2020

ILLUSTRATION: MARK CLUBB / SHUTTERSTOCK

STATEMENT 1: The breakbulk and project cargo industry is underserved by sector-specific digitalization tools.

Jake Swanson: “The challenge for the project industry is the upfront and implementation costs for these types of tools.

Projects are under intense pressure to meet budgets, and new technology development or implementation does not usually factor in. Both EPCs and logistics service providers need to be focused on technology development and innovation at the corporate level and find ways to invest and allocate resources to sector-specific digitalization tools.”

Samuel Holmes: “Most project logistics service providers (LSPs) utilize proprietary software or specific tools that are developed in-house. In general, the project cargo industry has been very slow to adapt to new technologies. This is partly due to LSPs and their investors not wanting to undertake the cost of investment because the ROI (return on investment) might not be attractive. A neutral party is needed to breach the technology gap. We are already seeing some progress in this direction. The technology needed to automate/ digitalize the entire project logistics operation from planning to execution for a one-off shipment with single origin to project shipments with various dimensions/ weight/origins already exists in other sectors. To provide a 21st century project logistics service for a modern business requires LSPs to recruit front-end and backend software engineers with Node JS/Angular/React Native and UI/UX skills to develop a robust and scalable web-based and mobile enterprise application.”

Ulrich Ulrichs: “The sector is overall too small, specialized and diverse to be ‘attractive’ for digitalization tools’ providers, and hence a lot of companies have to rely on tools developed in-house.”

NEUTRAL: Johan-Paul Verschuure: “I agree that digitization has not been sufficiently adopted in the sector and neither is it available, but it’s also up to the sector itself to take the initiative. There are good initiatives in other cargo segments which can serve as inspiration for the breakbulk sector to come up with applications developed by the sector itself.”

DISAGREE: Dennis Devlin: “There are plenty of technology and sector-specific digitalization tools available. The key question is whether and to what extent project owners and EPCs want to use the available technology and/or develop new tools. The appetite seems weak. For example, even when project materials package and item-level bar coding or RFID tags are used at origin, as has been done for many years, seldom are such systems (or the wealth of associated data) used for job-site (or off job-site) materials management, warehousing and storage. And in some cases, different IT tools are used. EPCs all support digitalization tools in theory, and many are members of the Construction Industry Institute, where such matters are discussed in detail in an open format. But in practice most don’t even use the available IT tools fully, much less spend time and effort to reduce their internal costs (and those the EPCs pass on to project owners) by properly implementing these tools.”

Grant Wattman: “While I believe we require more robust tools, I do believe there are tools.

We cannot wait for ‘specific’ breakbulk or project cargo applications. We need to utilize the tools available in the breakbulk and project cargo business.”

OUR EXPERT PANEL John Amos is an international logistics and transportation consultant specializing in issues related to planning, operations and regulatory issues.

Noelle Burke is vice president of project management at Power Agility, having previously held senior roles at GE.

Murray Cooper is director of corporate governance at LV Shipping & Transport, having previously held senior management positions at McDermott.

Dennis Devlin is senior director of special project logistics at North America Maersk, having previously worked in senior positions with DB Schenker, Panalpina and BDP International.

Dharmendra Gangrade is the head of logistics at L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering, part of EPC Larsen and Toubro.

Samuel Holmes is logistics and export compliance coordinator at Wood Group and has worked on small and large capital projects in the onshore and offshore energy services sectors.

Anders Maul is commercial director of energy and projects at Blue Water Shipping, a global provider of logistics services in modern supply chain management.

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 13

OUR PANEL continued Dennis Mottola is a global logistics consultant who has served his entire career in the supply chain and global logistics discipline.

Roger Strevens is vice president for global sustainability for Wallenius Wilhelmsen, a global shipping and logistics provider.

Jake Swanson is global head for the EPC project sector at DGF Industrial Projects for DHL Industrial Projects.

Ulrich Ulrichs is CEO of multipurpose ship operator BBC Chartering.

Margaret J. Vaughan has more than 30 years’ experience in all facets of supply chain management, most recently as manager of transportation and logistics/export compliance at Wood Group.

Johan-Paul Verschuure is a maritime entrepreneur and project director at Rebel, focusing on the development of business cases and delivering projects in the port and maritime sector.

Frans Waals is a senior port and shipping consultant at marine information and intelligence provider Dynamar.

Grant Wattman is president and founder at Jade Management Group and has more than 46 years’ worth of industry experience in leadership roles, most recently as president and CEO of Agility Project Logistics.

14 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

STATEMENT 2: The industry is flexible enough to adapt to the post-Covid operating environment.

AGREE: Anders Maul: “For almost as long as one can remember, we work in an ever-changing and volatile industry. It’s a major challenge, but history shows that we, as an industry, can overcome various crises.”

John Amos: “The industry has changed and adapted to many challenges since its initial growth in the late 1960s. The main challenges have been the growth of the market, need for larger vessels to accommodate the size and weight of cargo, recessions, availability of financing, and environmental considerations. New projects are already in the bidding stage.”

Murray Cooper: “The industry must adapt to the new normal.”

Dennis Mottola: “I believe the industry has adapted well to the Covid operating environment and is flexible enough to adapt to whatever the postCovid operating environment requires.”

Margaret Vaughan: “The coronavirus is no different than any setback the industry has faced.”

Grant Wattman: “The industry is healthy and strong.

There will be a thinning of those not forward looking, taking excessive risk with pricing and contract terms they accept, and working capital challenges.

The market will reshape stronger.”

Johan-Paul Vershuure: “The breakbulk sector and

maritime sector in general has always been able to adjust to any new set of circumstances.

It will require good cooperation between all parties in the sector, including governments setting regulations. The one that does that the quickest and the best will benefit from this current situation.”

Frans Waals: “Breakbulk is a flexible industry. Adapting to difficult and changing circumstances is second nature to it.”

Jake Swanson: “The project sector by nature is resilient and flexible. We are problem solvers and solution drivers. In most cases that I have seen, companies have been able to adapt to our current circumstances and find a way to press forward, stay in touch with project teams and continue to keep cargo moving.”

Samuel Holmes: “Adaptability is an inherent nature of the project cargo sector. We operate in a very dynamic business environment. It was not surprising that project logistics companies and the industry as a whole were quickly able to adapt and support local governments with various relief efforts. The same adjustment will be made after the storm (Covid-19) is over.”

NEUTRAL: Noelle Burke: “I think the companies that refuse to recognize that the world has changed will eventually be gone. And the companies that are proactive in changing their company/ execution strategy to adapt to our new world will not only survive, but thrive. The need for shipping breakbulk cargo will never just disappear. It’s how we react to the parameters we’re working in which will determine who will survive.

There will NEED to be flexibility to adapt, or I don’t foresee companies around long term.”

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Membership Available in Selective Markets!

Application: info@gpln.net / www.gpln.net

COVER STORY

STATEMENT 3 Achieving sustainability targets is less important in the current climate.

AGREE: John Amos: “During the current climate, which has more factors than the pandemic, the industry has struggled to stay in business. Bankruptcies, mergers and insufficient cargo has resulted in many companies having difficulty in ‘staying afloat.’ ” Dharmendra Gangrade: “Survival has become the first priority, over ensuring sustainability targets.”

Ulrich Ulrichs: “The shipping industry and especially the multipurpose vessel/project segment has been in crisis mode for years, and carriers have been struggling to survive; many have disappeared. The industry segment has been undervalued and ‘underpaid’ for years, and therefore has had to focus on short-term issues and ‘survival’ rather than sustainability or the climate. Carriers need to be paid more ‘fairly,’ deliver better margins to shareholders in order to invest in new technologies, systems and assets to set and achieve new sustainability and environmental targets.”

DISAGREE: Anders Maul: “As an industry we must constantly strive to contribute.

One climate doesn’t rule out the other climate.”

Dennis Devlin: “Achieving sustainability targets is and will remain vital.”

Murray Cooper: “Supply chain sustainability is extremely important during the Covid-19 period of uncertainty.”

Margaret Vaughan: “Achieving sustainability is neither less nor more important in the current climate. It is a goal that needs to be reached. Schedules must be maintained or the goal will never be achieved because there will always be some setback that must be overcome.”

16 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

The most attractive attributes for projects in 2021 (one being the most important) Answers displayed as mean figure of total rankings

Market/Industry Stability Multinational Sustainable Government Funded Favorable Payment Terms Green Credentials National

0

1

Roger Strevens: “Industry leaders realize their stakeholders’ views on sustainability targets are at least as important as their own.

Those stakeholders, who include customers, investors and regulators, are all increasing their focus and expectations on sustainability. For some it has to do with addressing the climate imperative, while for others performance on sustainability – especially now – is a surefire indicator of good corporate health and resilience.”

Grant Wattman: “All targets and plans may need to be modified because of our current business climate. I see no rationale for moving sustainability lower in the priority than it currently holds.”

Johan-Paul Verschuure: “Disagree, but not all targets can be forced upon the industry in the short term given the business climate at the moment. The sustainability focus may even offer an opportunity for the industry, where clients of the sector are increasingly looking at sustainability to differentiate themselves and where public bodies and regulators also seem to be moving towards more focus on sustainability. Disregarding these trends in the short term will make business more difficult in the longer term.”

Samuel Holmes: “All supply chain partners and stakeholders including project logistics companies are working towards sustainable initiatives to protect the environment. I think it is

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becoming more important than ever for companies to strive and achieve sustainability targets. It is good for the environment and good for the company image.”

STATEMENT 4 The breakbulk and project cargo industry is not taking enough responsibility for the climate.

AGREE: Frans Waals: “The breakbulk and project cargo industry has neither the scale nor the funds to effectively carry out climate policies. Also, there is no ordering new ships, which is necessary for advancing technical developments.”

Murray Cooper: “An integrated approach focusing on collaboration with all the stakeholders is required to co-create success.”

Roger Strevens: “Although there are notable exceptions among project cargo carriers, the comparison with other segments of the shipping industry still tends to be unfavorable. There are few carriers that are pioneering sustainable innovations, or who are even willing to be vocal on the subject. There’s an interesting contrast to be made with the trend among project cargo shippers, who are becoming more sophisticated and demanding on climate and sustainability issues.”

ISSUE 6 / 2020

| FMT | FALLine | Fednav Direct |

READY FOR TAKE OFF

COVER STORY

Sustainability is just one component in the decision-making of industry leaders.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

DISAGREE: Dennis Devlin: “The project cargo industry supports the transport and logistics of whatever major projects are being built. Increasingly, this means offshore wind, which is clearly, overall, good for the environment. In any case, those of us who support the transport of project cargoes in whatever capacity have nothing whatsoever to do with the decisions as to what sorts of projects (green or not-so-green) are being built.”

Margaret Vaughan: “I personally feel that the greatest risk to our climate, and the No. 1 emitter of CO 2 , is people. Overpopulation is the main cause of climatological issues, in my opinion, and the earth has a strange way of taking care of herself in that respect.”

Grant Wattman: “The industry is taking responsibility across the portfolio of participants. Sustainability is a component in the decision-making of industry leaders.”

18 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Dharmendra Gangrade: “The breakbulk industry is a very, very small contributor to climate change, and I feel the competitive environment and compliance to IMO2020 are sufficient enough to make a positive impact on climate change.”

STATEMENT 5 Remote working in the breakbulk and project cargo industry is not maintainable long term.

AGREE: Roger Strevens: “While true, it is not a point that applies to the breakbulk and project segment only; the whole industry is in the same boat, so to speak. While (video) calls are an effective means for conveying information and even resolving some problems, there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction when it comes to building trust and new relationships. At the same time, it seems likely that increased remote working and reduced travel will

prove to be enduring effects in the post Covid-19 era.”

Frans Waals: “The breakbulk and project cargo industry is not considered very suitable for remote working.”

Samuel Holmes: “I agreed that it is not maintainable in the long term because companies will fall back to the old ways of doing business postCovid-19. Covid-19 has proven remote work in the project cargo industry is possible. A change in mindset will be necessary to convince industry leaders that individuals can work from anywhere, as long as they have access to internet and their company’s shared folder. I think it is also time to reevaluate office space utilization – that is reducing the amount of real estate office buildings, and allowing employees to visit physical office space every other week. This will reduce overall cost on real estate and provide more flexibility for employees.”

Ulrich Ulrichs: “It is still a ‘small’ and people’s business segment and personal contacts and relationships will still be very important in the future.”

ISSUE 6 / 2020

COVER STORY

NEUTRAL: John Amos: “A degree of remote working has always been a part of the project cargo industry. It is always changing, as projects come and go and employees often work alone and remotely. It is necessary to work in the office at least part of the time to be knowledgeable of company developments, information and activities.”

DISAGREE: Dennis Devlin: “The world has learned that working remotely is actually very effective. In the long term, when the pandemic subsides or an effective vaccine is developed, it’s highly likely that many businesses, including the project cargo industry, will continue to work remotely to a certain extent to gain some of the benefits everyone has seen: less time commuting; more time working.

People will meet, and will go to offices, but less frequently than before.”

Murray Cooper: “Remote working and getting to the site of the logistics action is essential to the success of all breakbulk shipments.”

Noelle Burke: “With modern video technology and software applications in essence meetings are still ‘face to face.’ What I think will happen is there will be more pressure for companies to provide ‘world-class execution’ versus sustaining business relationships. I also think we’ll see companies weaned out that haven’t invested in technology and the discipline of utilizing those technologies to their fullest capacity.”

Margaret Vaughan: “I agree that for some functions remote working is unfeasible. However, mankind has a strange way of developing new and creative ways of making things work.”

Dennis Mottola: “Although not ideal in some cases, I believe it is maintainable long term for those jobs that can be performed remotely. The industry has adapted well to working remotely thus far through the pandemic. I believe this demonstrated adaptability has businesses already considering trade-offs for how they will work in the future from the office vs remotely.”

Grant Wattman: “While I do not see 100 percent of staff working

remotely, this experiment has proven there are capabilities and skill sets that can be as effective remote. I see a hybrid model where remote engagement becomes a matter of routine.”

Dharmendra Gangrade: “We need to be realistic that other than physical activities/movements all can be performed remotely with no negative impact. We, as an EPC, manage many of our projects at multiple geographies simultaneously without any hitch. Key to success is the right, experienced and trustworthy service provider who acts as your extended arm to ensure operations are successful.”

Jake Swanson: “I have always felt that with a laptop and cellphone I could be dangerous. The challenge will be training the next generation, as I feel it is important to work in close contact for developing experience. Also, business development will need to adapt if client visits and personal contact will be limited.

However, overall, I believe that project teams can still collaborate and function effectively while working remotely.”

Project cargo movers need to adapt to meet the challenges of the coming year.

CREDIT: GAC

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 19

Project owners across all the sectors are reducing capital budgets.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

QUESTION: What is the outlook for projects in 2021 and what challenges are on the horizon?

Johan-Paul Vershuure: “Public sector initiatives need to be accelerated to balance the sector. The public sector can give a push in investments in the sector which have been lagging, such as in infrastructure in many countries or in projects preparing economies for the next century.”

Margaret Vaughan: “Much will depend on outside factors such as: who will win the U.S. presidential elections, what will trade with China look like, will there be an escalation in tension between the U.S. and China, will there be an escalation in tension in the Middle East, and who wins the Super Bowl – AFC (bear market), or old NFC (bull market).”

Noelle Burke: “While we are seeing financing approved for big projects, we are seeing them slide to the right. The issue “I believe that we will is now the supply see a good amount of chain is pressed projects coming back to with enough labor to meet deadlines.”

Dharmendra Gangrade: “Most of the ongoing project work is life in 2021 as we adjust being delayed by six to eight months, Ulrich Ulrichs: and start to see a return and companies “General breakto normalcy.” are delaying the bulk/project announcement of cargoes will partly – Jake Swanson new projects due to move to other segoverall degrowth in GDP ments like container and in the major economies of the ro-ro (roll-on, roll-off), but world. Companies want to hold volumes and revenues will be comon to or slow down their cash outflow pensated by increasing wind energy to meet their existing cash flow. This related volumes.” will lead to a lower number of projects, leading to decline in workforce.”

Dennis Devlin: “Project owners in oil and gas, mining, LNG, petroGrant Wattman: “Capital markets chemicals, power generation including are tight, construction schedules are traditional, wind and solar power as sliding due to Covid/CDC distancing well as other industries are all reducing and other requirements that reduce their capital budgets, and many projsite labor footprint, demand globally ects will be delayed or cancelled. There is slowing and other factors will push will of course still be work, but the major capex out further.” industry will temporarily decline.”

20 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Jake Swanson: “There are quite a lot of projects that have been put on delayed status. I believe that we will see a good amount of projects coming back to life in 2021 as we adjust and start to see a return to normalcy.”

QUESTION: Will geopolitics play a greater or lesser role on project cargo trade in 2021?

Greater

58% Same level

35%

Lesser

7%

Samuel Holmes: “Geopolitics is always a major risk factor. Four potential issues that will drive the impact of geopolitics on the project cargo trade are: U.S. election – who is in the White House as the continuing trade war with China depends ISSUE 6 / 2020

COVER STORY

on U.S. election results; UK-EU relations; Mozambique’s insurgent crisis; and tensions in the Middle East.”

Johan-Paul Verschuure: “In a slow growth or even shrinking economic background, geopolitics is often a point of attention. In the current situation, this topic will be here to stay for the next few years.”

“I expect more government-funded projects to help boost the global economy.”

– Samuel Holmes

Dharmendra Gangrade: “U.S.China trade ties are at all-time lows, and this started even before Covid-19 hit the world. Many major developed countries and global companies have announced or are exploring shifting or switching base from China to reduce their dependence on a rigid low-cost supply chain to build a resilient supply chain to ensure uninterrupted supplies.”

QUESTION: Are you expecting more public or private projects in 2021?

Private

40%

Public

60%

Samuel Holmes: “Investors are uncertain with Covid-19 and the decline in oil prices. Therefore, expect more government-funded projects to help boost the global economy. There will of course be some private projects – especially in renewables and mining. For oil and gas projects, I don’t expect major activities for 2021.”

Dharmendra Gangrade: “Governments of many countries across the world have come forward with strong stimulus packages (estimated

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Ulrich Ulrichs: “The outcome of the U.S. elections, Brexit, Russia, China-related issues and general trade sanctions will have a bigger impact on project cargo trades than before.”

at US$17 trillion to US$18 trillion) to fight back recessions which will surely support growth.”

Margaret Vaughan: “China will be leading the way on public projects. The virus has stretched the budgets of most governments so the majority of projects in 2021 are going to be privately funded.”

QUESTION: Is the industry delivering on diversity objectives?

Samuel Homes: “I do think the current crisis we are facing will not improve the situation. Women are still very much underrepresented in the industry. Same can be said for individuals aged under 35. It is a crisis that needs immediate real action by all industry stakeholders. ECMC’s (U.S. Exporters Competitive Maritime Council’s) Education Committee,

WILL (Women in Logistics Leadership), (founded by Diana Davila of UTC), and Breakbulk have been working to attract a diversified generation of logistics professionals that is more representative of the global environment we work in.”

Grant Wattman: “I believe the industry has done well with diversity.

My question is ‘has the industry defined its diversity objective?’”

Dennis Mottola: “Not sure the industry has any stated or even implied diversity objectives, although I believe the breakbulk and project cargo industry is already diverse.”

Murray Cooper: “Diversity is essential in order to successfully work through the various business and community cultural differences.” BB Participants are active and former members to Breakbulk’s Editorial Advisory Board. www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 21

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

REGIONAL REVIEW

UNPRECEDENTED UNCERTAINTY US Ports Seek Federal Funds to Stay Afloat

BY PAUL SCOTT ABBOTT

U

.S. ports, including those moving project and breakbulk cargoes, require billions of dollars of federal funding to overcome Covid-19-related impacts and to ensure sustained operations, but discordant partisan politics appear to be standing in the way on both fronts.

Indeed, the viral pandemic and the economic plummet it has prompted are woven into a troubling tapestry that, if not aflame, is perilously frayed. Tenuous threads also include a nationwide social justice uprising with occasional violence, raging wildfires, a devastating hurricane striking Louisiana and Texas, and a host of 22 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

actions by President Donald Trump, such as threats to “decouple” the U.S. economy from that of China.

It all adds up to unprecedented uncertainty. And for leadership of key maritime transportation industry bodies, as well as major breakbulk and project cargo ports, the cries are becoming increasingly vocal for much-needed stability which currently stalled legislative measures might bring.

By early September’s Labor Day weekend, with the Nov. 3 presidential election less than two months away, the U.S. still did not have control of its deadliest health crisis since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and was struggling to recover from its worst economic collapse since the Great

Depression struck in 1929. The U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 200,000, with reported cases surpassing 7 million, while the nation’s economy was barely chipping away at offsetting its record 31.7 percent annualized contraction of the second quarter and an unparalleled loss of 22 million jobs.

LEGISLATION IN LIMBO

Amid politicking for the November election, key legislation of particular interest to U.S. ports remained in limbo.

Remaining without passage were a second round of pandemic stimulus funding and H.R. 7515, the Maritime Transportation System Emergency Relief Act of 2020, or MTSERA, and ISSUE 6 / 2020

the companion S. 4395. H.R. 7515 was promptly adopted as an amendment to H.R. 6395, the William M. “Mac” Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which passed the House on July 21, moving it to the Senate for consideration.

However, Trump has warned of a veto of H.R. 6395 because of a provision boding to remove the names of Confederate Civil War commanders from 10 major military installations – base names Trump wants to keep in place.

Christopher J. Connor, CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities, called MTSERA “hugely significant for the port industry,” noting that it would give Congress a permanent mechanism via the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration to appropriate emergency relief funds for America’s maritime system, including ports, in the event of emergencies and disasters ranging from hurricanes to health pandemics.

U.S. ports, which as of last year had been responsible for US$5.4 trillion in annual economic activity, face an estimated decline of between 20 percent and 30 percent in total annual receipts in 2020, according to Connor.

“Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, legislators have repeatedly told AAPA that aid to America’s port system was hampered by the lack of a mechanism for distribution,” Connor said. “The MTSERA legislation would resolve that once and for all.”

Lauren Brand, president of the National Association of Waterfront Employers, or NAWE, also has high hopes for MTSERA. She was among those who testified at a May 29 hearing of a House subcommittee out of which MTSERA ultimately emerged.

“We believe this is historic legislation as it is Lauren Brand the first to provide assistance NAWE

A reactor destined for a plant in Donaldsville, Louisiana, is discharged at the Port of New Orleans, which, like many other U.S. ports, is seeing a significant decline in breakbulk cargo volumes.

CREDIT: PORT OF NEW ORLEANS

to both public and private maritime industry entities for 11 operational cost categories for declared disasters,” Brand told Breakbulk. “Our nation’s ports and terminals have been buffeted by hurricanes, closed by earthquakes, hit by tornadoes, and it will keep happening. Until MTSERA, there has been no federal program that private terminal operators can turn to for assistance in time of disaster.

“The genius of this proposed bill is that it will address future needs as well as this awful pandemic,” she continued. “Our cargo terminal operators have seen cargo declines up to 32 percent and our cruise terminal businesses plummeted to zero. A decline in revenues at the exact time operating costs skyrocket is a difficult business scenario to sustain.”

Brand said operating cost increases include cleaning, sanitizing, personal protective equipment and other safeguards for workers, adjusting terminal operations for recommended social distancing and more. Debt service demands do not stop even if work on a project has been halted, she noted.

‘ONE-TWO PUNCH’ NEEDED

That said, Brand defined emergency relief as a short-term solution

to an immediate problem requiring streamlined administrative requirements to get funds out the door. Just as vital, she said, is long-term infrastructure funding for port facilities and intermodal connections.

“Running programs one year at a time costs more in the long run, as it focuses on regional versus systemwide impacts and diminishes the efficiency of the government staff charged with running the program under the voluminous federal regulatory process,” said Brand, who served 11 years at MARAD, including as associate administrator for ports and waterways, before taking the helm at NAWE in late 2019.

“This,” she said, “is the onetwo punch needed to win the fight to improve the U.S. transportation system overall: Immediate relief for declared disasters to get facilities back up and running strong, then help them invest for the long term to handle our nation’s freight needs for the future.”

Brand said each year for the past 10 years has seen only a tiny share of requests to MARAD for Port Infrastructure Development Program funding gaining approval under the present competitive grants framework. In a typical year, requests may www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 23

REGIONAL REVIEW

top US$1 billion, but only US$50 million to US$200 million in grants are awarded.

She also cautioned that federal awards, whether part of a stimulus package or via port infrastructure grants, are subject to a long administrative cycle. Stimulus funds might be available within six months of bill passage, while infrastructure grants could take a year.

“If eligible applicants know what to expect, they can work within these parameters,” Brand said. “But one element that often falls victim to grant

timetables is the estimated cost of projects. A project’s cost estimate must be based on the most current material costs available and must include an adequate contingency. I have seen where estimates for a project were completed a year before a grant application was submitted, and once the grant funds were ready to be spent, 24 more months had gone by. Cost estimates that were three years old limited the project, requiring re-engineering, reduction of project scope and reduction of equipment purchases to meet the available budget.”

RELIEF FUNDING URGED

Back on July 23, AAPA was joined by 69 co-signatories from U.S. ports and related entities on letters to the White House, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House leadership urging inclusion of US$1.5 billion in emergency relief funding for ports in a second round of Covidrelated legislation, to follow the initial US$2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, signed into law

by Trump on March 27.

The letters also called for an

Wind energy components, including blades, are moving at a record pace through the Port of Brownsville, where officials are almost apologetic about sustained cargo gains.

CREDIT: PORT OF BROWNSVILLE

BROWNSVILLE BUCKS TRENDS AT US-MEXICO BORDER The Port of Brownsville’s senior director of marketing and business development, Steve Tyndal, is almost apologetic when he talks about how well the Texas port just north of the U.S.-Mexico border is faring.

“We’ve been very careful to not speak too publicly about the current success of the port,” Tyndal told Breakbulk. “We know we’re having a great year, and we know other ports are suffering. We want to be humble.”

The Brownsville port’s unaudited total operating revenues through June were up 73 percent compared with a year earlier, reaching nearly US$20.4 million for the six-month period. Total cargo tonnage for the first half was up 13 percent, to 5.24 million tonnes.

Tyndal is quick to credit a port commission supportive of infrastructure development, appropriately targeted marketing and a concerted diversification strategy, but the landlord port’s location as a primary gateway to and from Mexico is the undeniable difference-maker. Plus, unlike many U.S. ports, Brownsville does not rely at all upon cruises and its containerized cargo business is just emerging.

24 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

The Port of Brownsville is having “a spectacular year” handling oversize units for wind energy farms, with 20 such projects this year, compared with seven or eight in 2019, Tyndal said.

Brownsville remains the leading U.S. port for shipping steel into Mexico, and, driven by new mill development in Mexico, that volume is anticipated to double within four years, according to Tyndal.

The port has further diversified with the shipbuilding operations of Keppel AmFELS, making 2,525-20-foot-equivalent-unit-capacity vessels for deployment in Jones Act trade

by Pasha Hawaii. That means even more jobs plus shipments of equipment and materials.

Additional gains are anticipated as a compressed natural gas terminal is advancing and as three massive liquefied natural gas projects, representing a total capital investment of US$38.75 billion, come to fruition on port property. The LNG endeavors are temporarily on hold, but are expected to resume once the price of oil goes back up enough to make LNG more attractive.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

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REGIONAL REVIEW

amendment to the CARES Act to give specific authority to state governors to provide such funds to ports. Currently, port requests for CARES Act funds have been very limited, with one such applicant being the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which, in addition to seaport facilities, has airports, bridges and tunnels under its aegis. The bistate authority seeks US$3 billion to offset estimated revenue losses.

As of the Labor Day weekend, those cries for federal port funding had gone unheeded, although on Sept.

3, the Thursday preceding the holiday

weekend, U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao unveiled the first-ever National Freight Strategic Plan. But the plan did not include any funding specifics.

Support for the “one-two punch” approach backed Doug Wheeler

by AAPA, NAWE and a host of ports Florida Ports Council is shared by Doug Wheeler, president and CEO of the

COVID-RELATED LABOR SHORTAGE BITES At the Washington state Port of Vancouver USA – the leading handler of wind energy cargoes on the U.S. West Coast – a lack of a sufficient International Longshore and Warehouse Union labor supply has been the biggest blow caused by Covid19.

“The primary impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the availability of labor from our partners at the ILWU,” Alex Strogen, the port’s chief commercial officer, told Breakbulk. Also, wildfires have displaced many workers and their families.

Historically, dockworkers would travel between U.S. West Coast ports to supplement labor supplies when a surge of business exceeded ability to be handled by local workers.

However, as the scope of the pandemic became evident during the first quarter of 2020, the decision was made by the Pacific Maritime Association and ILWU to not allow for travel between ports on the U.S. West Coast in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus.

“The Port of Vancouver USA found itself in a challenging position as energy infrastructure cargoes reached unprecedented levels, straining the local labor supply and requiring the port to open additional staging areas as cargo velocity slowed,” Strogen said.

Fortunately, he said, the port was in an enviable position in that it had ample laydown area to meet customer needs with one of the largest waterside staging areas on the West Coast, at 85 acres.

A shipment of wind blades, destined for delivery to Canada, is stored in a laydown area at the Port of Vancouver USA, along the Columbia River in Washington state.

CREDIT: PORT OF VANCOUVER USA

26 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Florida Ports Council, who said the Covid-related termination of cruises, along with a slowdown in cargo traffic, including in shipments of steel and automobiles, has led to the loss of an estimated 169,000 jobs in Florida and a US$23 billion hit to Florida’s economy.

“The immediate relief is what is needed first and foremost, but the need is two-pronged,” Wheeler told Breakbulk, citing importance of port funding in ongoing appropriations as well. He has written to Senate leaders seeking US$1.5 billion in immediate emergency aid to U.S. seaports plus another US$2 billion to be made available to other eligible maritime businesses.

“Congress must pass legislation to provide the maritime sector the same protections and relief given to other industries during Covid-19, and close a huge gap in current federal emergency assistance that has left links in the maritime supply chain isolated and unable to access other assistance programs available to other industries,” he said.

“I don’t think I’m going to try to guess what Congress is thinking,” Wheeler said. “You’ve got to be really careful about allowing this to stop projects that are needed for the supply chain.”

U.S. GULF PORTS HIT

Among U.S. ports taking a hit due to the pandemic are major breakbulk facilities in the Gulf of Mexico region.

Port Houston reported year-overyear drops in total cargo tonnage of 7 percent in June and 6 percent in July, with declines in handling of steel, automobiles and breakbulk cargo as a whole. But port officials have said they will not be deterred from proceeding with Houston Ship Channel expansion and wharf and yard infrastructure enhancements.

Meanwhile, at the Port of New Orleans, breakbulk volumes through July were down 27 percent from a year ago, according to Jessica Ragusa, the Mississippi River port’s communications manager, who said the drop has been driven primarily by reductions in steel imports and a slowdown in the oil and gas market. On the plus side, wind power components are among goods enjoying increased importation.

“Like other U.S. ports handling breakbulk, the Port of New Orleans’ breakbulk tonnage has been severely ISSUE 6 / 2020

In Southeast Texas, project cargo for ExxonMobil moves through the Port of Beaumont, where officials remain optimistic about immediate and longer-term federal funding. CREDIT: PORT OF BEAUMONT

impacted by tariffs, Covid and weakened demand associated with Covid, such as a reduction in North American manufacturing in the automobile industry and the current market dynamics in the oil and gas industry,” Ragusa said.

“Despite the downturn in breakbulk cargo, the port continues to invest in maintenance and upgrades to our breakbulk facilities,” she said. “The port invested approximately US$15 million between 2018 and 2019 in breakbulk wharves alone.

“It is critical,” Ragusa said, “for Port NOLA to continue to move forward with vital infrastructure projects to maintain a state of readiness to lead the nation’s economic recovery.”

STORM ADDS TO WOES

As if maritime and energy-related facilities along the Gulf didn’t already have enough concerns, Hurricane Laura made landfall in Southwest Louisiana on Aug. 26, with winds reaching more than 130 miles an hour and causing extensive flooding.

While ports of New Orleans and Houston, respectively to the east and west of Laura’s path, were minimally impacted, the Port of Lake Charles, Louisiana, was out of commission for a week, and some Southwest Louisiana liquefied natural gas and chemical plants, including Sempra Energy’s

Cameron LNG terminal in Hackberry, were looking at extended shutdowns.

In Southeast Texas, the ports of Port Arthur and Beaumont, both of which see substantial breakbulk and project cargo activity, each got power back within a week.

“The pandemic has not had a significant impact on the Port of Beaumont as of yet, but we have seen large industrial projects put a pause on their development efforts in recent months,” said Sadé Chick, the Port of Beaumont’s director of corporate affairs. “We understand this could result in a slowdown in the future, but are optimistic that project and breakbulk cargoes will bounce back as economic recovery efforts continue.”

The Port of Beaumont, which was seeing a 13.5 percent year-over-year increase in cargo volume through August, is planning to proceed with all 19 projects under its recently approved US$248.8 million capital improvement program, with 13 of those undertakings under way, Chick said.

She pointed to advocacy efforts of AAPA and Southeast Texas representatives in U.S. Congress, commenting, “The recovery packages that focus on infrastructure improvements are a win for the maritime industry, but not necessarily a savior. The savior comes in the form of the Port Infrastructure

Development Program, which is specific to ports and has made a noticeable impact on every region it has touched.

“Billions of dollars are needed to modernize port facilities nationwide to remain competitive, and this program is working toward that goal,” Chick added. “Unfortunately, even though port activity supports 26 percent of the GDP, roadways are typically given priority when it comes to funding, and seaports historically receive only a small fraction of the funds they are eligible for.”

AAPA’s Connor put it this way: “Policymakers must not overlook our nation’s ports in their time of need.

The relief we’re seeking isn’t about replacing lost carrier, cargo and cruise passenger revenue. It’s about ensuring that ports are able to keep pace with the accelerating costs of protecting their workers while keeping their workforce employed. It’s about ensuring bond and other debt instrument payments aren’t missed. Ultimately, it’s about maintaining a state of readiness so ports can significantly aid in the nation’s eventual economic recovery.” BB A professional journalist for nearly 50 years, U.S.-based Paul Scott Abbott has focused on transportation topics since the late 1980s. www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 27

EMERGING MARKETS

NuScale has invested more than US$1 billion in technology development and licensing of its small modular reactor.

CREDIT: NUSCALE

MODULARIZED

NuCLEAR

M

History in the Making at NuScale |

odularized power plant components are giving stick-built developments a run for their money.

Labor, construction costs, equipment rentals, site facilities and supplies – all may be reduced with prefabricated elements, which, proponents say, can offset increased engineering, transportation and structural costs. The result can be better power-generation solutions, completed more quickly.

However, in the U.S. in the last few decades, nuclear energy has been mired in controversy, largely left out of the clean energy investment game and the modularization trend.

That changed in late August when Oregon-based NuScale Power garnered international attention as its small modular reactor received design approval from the U.S. Nuclear 28 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Regulatory Commission. The NRC completed the six-phase (technical) review, which is the last and final phase of the Design Certification Application, or DCA, for the company’s small modular reactor, or SMR, with the issuance of the Final Safety Evaluation Report.

“With this final phase of NuScale’s DCA now complete, customers can proceed with plans to develop Nu-Scale power plants with the understanding that the NRC has approved the safety aspects of the NuScale design,” said Scott Bailey, vice president of supply chain for NuScale.

The initial concept for the SMR technology was developed from 2000 to 2003 at Oregon State University, with starter funding provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. NuScale has been working to commercialize it since 2007.

BY LORI MUSSER

Bailey said: “To date, NuScale has invested over US$1 billion in our technology development and licensing, which includes federal support from the U.S. Department of Energy of over US$300 million in cost-shared funding.”

The energy department’s investment undoubtedly reflects the economic and national security significance of successfully bringing the first U.S. small modular reactor to market. “The zerocarbon energy of the future is no longer a distant dream,” Bailey said.

The NRC go-ahead is a milestone.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the average age of U.S. commercial power reactors runs about 40 years. Aside from the Tennessee Watts Bar Unit 2, which began operation in June 2016, the next-youngest operating reactor is Watts Bar Unit 1, which entered service in May 1996.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

CUSTOMERS TO PROCEED

With NuScale’s design now deemed safe, commercialization can move forward. The technology is expected to have international appeal. NuScale has about 550 patents granted or pending in nearly 20 countries, according to Bailey.

Some entities are already interested in converting non-nuclear plant sites, Bailey said. Customers now going ahead with plans to develop NuScale plants won’t go it alone. Prospective modularized nuclear plant owners require a great deal of support in planning, licensing and developing new facilities.

Engineering, procurement and construction companies that have offered modular construction options to clients in power generation now have a new solution to offer. Fluor Corp. is already on board: in 2011, it became majority shareholder in NuScale.

NuScale’s SMR-generated power is considered clean energy. It is carbonfree, and requires a far smaller land footprint than wind, sun or hydropower generation, according to company literature.

As currently conceived, a NuScale plant would be scalable up to a dozen 60 MWe (electric power megawatts) modules capable of powering roughly 540,000 homes in the U.S. Bailey said a NuScale plant can provide reliable power for mission-critical facilities such as hospitals, military bases and data centers; support hydrogen production for fuel cell vehicles, industrial processes, or energy storage; and provide energy for oil and chemical refining to reduce the carbon footprint of certain refining activities using fossil fuels by more than 30 percent.

Because the NuScale plants don’t require incoming power, they may be suitable for remote sites, connecting out to a grid, in a sort of microgrid situation.

A NuScale plant can also extensively “load follow” to complement intermittent power generation from wind, solar and hydropower. Three ways to change power output from a NuScale facility include: • Turbine bypass, which, as the name implies, bypasses turbine steam to the condenser over a period of seconds/ minutes/hours.

• Power maneuverability, which allows reactor power to adjust over a period.

• Dispatchable modules, which takes one or more reactors offline for a period of, say, a day or more. The operational flexibility of the plant can balance power supply on the grid, regardless of the time of day, season or weather.

WORKING WITH WEATHER VAGARIES

The technology offers resilience for hurricane- or other disaster-prone areas. According to NuScale’s built-forresilience webpage, following a loss of offsite power event, a NuScale SMR can be “black-started” from cold conditions and continue to power an entire plant without the plant being connected to the grid. This is referred to as operating in Island Mode. The NuScale plant can provide power to the main grid in 60 MWe increments as soon as the grid is restored.

But when asked if the technology could in any way be used for temporary disaster-recovery efforts, Bailey said: “This is not a throw it-in-the-back-ofthe-truck generator. It is not portable, but it is extremely robust.”

The SMRs can do more than send power out to the grid, Bailey added.

When Jose Reyes, co-founder and chief technology officer of NuScale, introduced the NuScale Diverse Energy Platform back in 2015, he highlighted the SMR technology as a nuclear “plugand-play” solution that provides reliable, flexible power to diverse applications.

“Our SMRs facilitate decarbonization across non-electrical applications, including water desalination, district heating, hydrogen production, and oil refining, as well as serving electricity customers that require flexible, safe power with renewable load-following capability,” Bailey said.

Some of NuScale’s cogeneration research collaborations have delivered impressive results. A 6-Module NuScale plant could produce about 240 tons per day of carbon-free hydrogen for an ammonia plant, and an 8-Module NuScale plant could produce 60 million gallons per day of clean water plus about 400 MWe to the grid – enough electricity and clean water for a city of 300,000 people.

ROLLOUT

As of August 2020, NuScale had signed agreements with entities in the U.S., Canada, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Jordan. It has similar agreements in other locales in the works.

Low carbon, secure electricity

Factory fabrication

NuScale Power Module including containment and reactor vessel

Housed in a 12 module reactor building

To the plant site

TM

Shipped by truck, rail or barge

NuScale life cycle to energy production.

CREDIT: NUSCALE

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 29

EMERGING MARKETS

NuScale plants are suitable for remote sites because they don’t require incoming power.

CREDIT: NUSCALE

By the end of this decade, a NuScale 12-module power plant will become part of the Carbon Free Power Project, which is an initiative of the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems public power consortium. The first module of the 720 MWe plant is planned for operation as early as mid-2029. All 12 modules are expected to be operating by 2030.

MODULARIZED COMPONENTS

The NuScale Power Module, or NPM, NuScale’s flagship small modular reactor, will be fabricated in a factory, shipped by truck, rail or barge to the plant site, and housed in a reactor building. The module’s main components are a reactor vessel, steam generators, and pressurizer, contained in an integral package. The main components range in size from 8 tons up to 195 tons and limiting dimensions range up to close to 19 feet. The components are small enough to be factory built for easy transport and installation.

To utilize the best and most efficient mode of transport, NuScale is reaching out to a cross-section of supply chain experts to facilitate future transportation and logistics.

“We are beginning the transportation and assembly process. We’re several years away from moving things, but have already begun to engage the transportation industry to optimize the final design to incorporate transportation standards. We call it Design for Manufacturing Assembly and Transport, or DFMAT,” Bailey said. Seeking out transportation companies for input on 30 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

design is expected to make it easier to manufacture, assemble and transport.

“Involving the suppliers and those that have to assemble the components puts us one step in front,” Bailey said.

He anticipates using barges as much as possible, but that won’t always be possible. The company’s first project is in Idaho – 500-600 miles from the nearest port of access. “So trucks will be important and necessary,” Bailey said.

While most components will be made in the U.S., Bailey said NuScale is also working with fabricators in Canada and South Korea.

WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE

“We are ‘The little engine that could,’ ” Bailey said. “In spite of those that thought this could not be done, we have persevered. Taking an idea that was born at a university almost 20 years ago, starting a company with the single purpose of deploying this technology, and we are now on the verge of making it real through our first deployment in the United States.”

NuScale’s technology is new, and the movement of its reactor components will be new business for the transportation and logistics industry, but the process of loading, carrying and offloading the components may not be the biggest challenge for heavy haulers.

Because there are several large NuScale Power Module components that need to arrive on site with schedule precision, and there may be as many as 12 modules per plant, there will be dozens of large shipments per 12-unit power plant. “It will be like building

12 separate power plants on one site, each with its own steam turbine, etc.

And, weather may be a consideration.

Shipments will span about two years or more, meaning the winter months will need to be addressed.

“Tracking and transportation management with multiple subcomponents coming from multiple places will be extraordinarily important to us. There must be a well-choreographed transportation plan,” Bailey said.

While NuScale will provide the SMRs, Fluor, as lead investor and EPC constructor, will supply the rest of the plant and have even greater transportation needs, handling essentials such as the steam power plant and equipment, according to Bailey.

“Visibility and firm delivery dates are critical. Components need to come in a predictable manner. We are really relying on the transportation industry to help us find ways to do it faster, better, cheaper,” Bailey said, citing, for example, the need for customized cradles. He said he will seek creativity to continually optimize the cost and schedule.

NuScale’s philosophy embodies creativity, reinventing things in better ways, pushing to make things more efficient. Bailey said the company’s employees have a calling to make the world a better place, preserving natural resources for future generations.

Modularized nuclear is NuScale’s pathway. BB Based in the U.S., Lori Musser is a veteran shipping industry writer.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

DUAL LINE TRAILER THP/DC TAILORED TO MEET AMERICAN REQUIREMENTS THE VEHICLE AT A GLANCE Reduced transport time widening under load while rolling Safety first and foremost operation (widening, levelling, steering) via wireless remote control Low maintenance and long service life new ideas combined with proven ball bearing race ring technology

OUR WIDE PRODUCT RANGE FOR NORTH AMERICA

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

ENERGY UPDATE

MOVING ENERGY PARTS High Uncertainty as Oil, Gas Industry Transitions |

BY NEERAJ NANDURDIKAR

he oil and gas industry is in a state of transition. Within the last year, many of the industry’s leaders have unveiled ambitious plans to significantly reduce greenhouse gas, or GHGs, emissions – particularly CO2 and methane – from their energy activities.

As in many facets of business and life these days, however, the oil and gas industry is gripped by uncertainty about the direction the energy transition is headed. It remains too early to tell which of the most promising sustainable energy transition models – biofuels based or natural-gas centric or wind and solar power centric – will gain traction in the industrial, transportation, residential and commercial sectors.

Uncertainly is never a friend of business, but lower oil prices and changes in energy demand – as well as carbon pricing and government policies, particularly at some local and regional levels – are pushing the industry to accelerate its shift to sustainable energy. The

It means project shipping demand changes are coming in fast, if they have not already arrived.

Even though many oil and gas companies are enduring significant cuts to their capital expenditure accounts, these same companies, in addition to diverting significant amounts of capital for the development of cleaner energy generation systems, are deploying carbon capture, utilization, and storage, or CCUS, technologies. An uptick in the construction of CCUS projects can be expected over the next few years. These projects are known to entail movement of large kits necessitating the breakbulk and cargo transport services that the oil and gas sector has needed in the past.

Still, peering through the fog of uncertainty the oil and gas industry finds itself in, it is possible to discern some important features of the ongoing energy transition. Shipping leaders should consider how the following trends and observations could alter the breakbulk cargo market.

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Covid-19 pandemic, having reduced fossil fuels demand over the last several months, has actually sped up sustainability initiatives.

To sustain themselves throughout this transition, oil and gas companies are rebalancing their capital projects portfolios, prioritizing cleaner and GHG mitigation opportunities over their traditional revenue generating asset development opportunities. This is a tricky balance, as those traditional projects are often the source of large cash flows that fund the new energy projects.

Some companies have been looking to create synergies between their upstream and downstream petrochemicals businesses to streamline their organizations and operations. Other companies, meanwhile, have scaled back or divested their downstream businesses altogether to concentrate on shaping the evolving energy sector.

What does this all mean for project cargo and breakbulk industry leaders?

ISSUE 6 / 2020

A SHIFT TO LIGHTER PROJECTS

No matter what type of energy transition we see, it appears that the energy sector will be moving from heavy industrial to much lighter industrial type projects. Demand for shipping very large pieces of kit engineered and specially fabricated for onshore and offshore oil and gas assets can be expected to decline.

Making up for this decline in heavy industrial shipping should be demand for smaller pieces of project equipment that can be installed modularly. Think about the differences between transporting very large and awkwardly shaped process columns for an oil refinery versus moving several identical wind turbines for a wind power farm.

How might this reshape the breakbulk sector? It is likely many smaller vessels, and perhaps even container ships, could be used to move cargo for new energy projects. As a result, prices will be driven downward and competition among shippers will increase.

Operators of vessels capable of moving hundreds of tons may have to uncover efficiencies to compete with smaller ships hired to move much less weight.

As the oil and gas industry increases spending on new energy projects requiring lighter equipment and more modular components, shipping company leaders need to be asking questions such as: what sort of breakbulk cargo provider do we want to be, and are we going to be a multipurpose vessel provider offering lowest-cost transport, or are we going to be a specialty provider for heavy industrial project transport.

After all, even in the most aggressive transition scenarios offered up by the International Energy Agency – the 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway – fossil fuels will still play a good-sized role and, with the natural decline of 3 percent to 5 percent for the existing reserves, someone will still have to be exploring for and developing fossil fuels.

BREAKBULK SUSTAINABILITY COSTS A second observation is how breakbulk providers will respond to the potential for reduced cash flows while

sustainability costs are increasing.

Indeed, the new energy and breakbulk industries – and their suppliers – are tackling their own sets of similar and unique GHG emissions reduction mandates. Specific to the shipping sector, IMO2020 regulations mean that marine vessels have to hurry up to adapt to very-low-sulfur diesel fuel emission requirements.

The conversion to low-sulfur fuels is critical for the environment and also expensive for ship owners to absorb when cash flow is reduced. Further, while Scope 3 emissions are not used in oil and gas (energy company) calculations, eventually they may become important. This means the breakbulk industry may find itself addressing environmental, social and governance issues all over again while cash flow remains lower.

A third area breakbulk leaders must consider as the oil and gas industry transitions to a new energy industry involves smaller supply chains. The heavy industrial projects discussed in this article often entail movement of large pieces of equipment over long distances, from locations in Asia to the U.S. Gulf Coast, from Europe to West Africa, and so on.

New energy models portent the creation of much more regionalized supply chains.

Biofuel production plants, after the technologies are perfected, could be located in many world locations. By contrast, limitations exist on where oil can be produced and refineries can operate.

With improvements in battery storage

capabilities, electrical energy demands could be met more regionally or locally.

Breakbulk leaders should monitor the creation of energy value chains as they evolve. What do the connecting energy value chains look like? Will batteries as energy delivery systems replace midstream oil and gas pipelines?

Further, wider energy outlook considerations exist. Vessel operators should weigh whether their fleets are prepared to support global markets and sectors powered by natural gas-driven electricity or liquid biofuels. Each may require different kinds of projects and different kinds of shipping needs. Hopefully, the project cargo and breakbulk industry can turn to meet the energy sector’s transport requirements more nimbly than the vessels they pilot.

With shareholders, governments and the public mounting pressure on oil and gas companies to become cleaner energy providers sooner rather than later, the industry’s transformation is both a social mandate and business imperative.

Energy systems, and with it the energy industry, are transitioning. As is always the case, as customers’ needs change, providers will be forced to adjust. A few of the previously highlighted areas will affect change. It is important to recognize the energy transition has gone from a moderately paced run to a near sprint.

Breakbulk operator leaders must decide how their industry will keep up. BB Neeraj Nandurdikar is IPA’s energy practice director.

Biofuel production plants can be located in many world locations, opening the scope for supporting project cargo moves.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 33

PROFILE

NEW FAIRWAY SAL Tie-up Next Chapter for Intermarine |

W

ith a very fresh “Part of the SAL Heavy Lift Group” logo and hyperlink splashed on its online masthead, Intermarine is setting out on a new path.

The company has reimagined itself several times over the years, and was just nicely settling in as an independent company with a singular focus on the Americas market with a 25-year industry veteran at the helm, Richard Seeg.

Then SAL acquired a major stake in Intermarine, and brought along a whole new set of opportunities for both companies, according to SAL’s announcement in early October.

This investment is part and parcel of a wave of consolidation that has been washing through the industry.

Svend Andersen is the new CEO and shareholder of Intermarine. He 34 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

BY LORI MUSSER

brings to the table 40 years in the industry, including a prior stint at Intermarine.

He is also former CEO of BBC Chartering, and in that capacity, on the occasion of BBC’s 20th anniversary in 2017, predicted: “Consolidation is ongoing and I dare to say that it will continue to be the determining theme in our industry also in the coming years.” Andersen said the consolidation driver was that the “economic environment and the markets are plagued by overcapacity, which makes it an economic necessity to consolidate activities to create more effective and powerful players. Those should be able to survive and constructively shape the future of the segment.”

Three years later, the consolidation movement continues. It appears Andersen was right.

COMMON GROUND AND NEW TERRITORY

Intermarine is expected to operate as an independent brand within the SAL group. SAL’s announcement said: “Intermarine will tie its Americas liner service to SAL’s global heavy-lift trade and in combination bring to market the most comprehensive maritime breakbulk and heavy lift solution in the Americas.

“The Americas are about to see a unique project, breakbulk, and heavylift shipping setup unfold. Intermarine and SAL Heavy Lift have for decades been synonymous with shipping excellence, yet they have served different market segments and regions.”

For SAL, the benefits may lie in a larger “footprint in the Americas” with more access, services and a new pool of customers. The announcement mentioned more “vessels being able to ISSUE 6 / 2020

operate not only in and out of South America, but also into offsite river deltas, where SAL would otherwise have had limited access.”

For Intermarine, there will be access to SAL’s heavy-lift fleet – the world’s largest in the more than 900 tonne SWL sector. Presumably, there will be efficient connections for Americas’ cargo that goes global.

Industry consolidation typically brings opportunities and challenges.

While industry analysts are busy working out prospects related to the new venture, it is likely that both Intermarine and SAL Heavy Lift will find some cost-cutting and productivity gains.

In the Oct. 5, 2020 media release Richard Seeg, now Intermarine president, said: “Having SAL as an organization behind the activities of Intermarine brings with it a wide range of commercial opportunities.

SAL holds one Richard Seeg of the most Intermarine comprehensive sales networks globally, and they also bring vessels, world-class engineering capabilities and other resources that are extremely valuable to the commercial setup of Intermarine.”

OPPORTUNITY FOR CUSTOMERS

Drew K. Roberts is head of specialized transport for deugro (USA), Inc. He said, “From our perspective as a freight forwarder currently heavily involved in South America, this new combined effort between SAL Heavy Lift and Intermarine potentially opens up a more diversified service offering and flexibility within that particular market. The new collaboration from heavy hitters SAL and Intermarine is expected to bring forth some new healthy competition through sailing options and highly capable vessels to and from this region.”

From a more globalized service perspective, there may also be benefits. Roberts added: “The effects of this partnership approaching the worldwide market remains to be seen and we will be keeping an eye on how this may affect the market as a whole.

It is likely too early to tell, but it is our thought that the combination of the two companies could create a more capable service offering overall that we can rely on to help meet our client’s needs.”

Early in 2020, Intermarine’s Americas Liner Service became a standalone regional carrier covering the Caribbean, North, Central and South America. Intermarine, as agent for Industrial Maritime Carriers LLC, assumed a new structure after Zeamarine – the Zeaborn Ship Management and Intermarine joint venture – divested its Americas business at the beginning of the year.

Seeg said that from the outset, Intermarine has been customerdriven, “founded 30 years ago, with a focus on fulfilling customer needs in the breakbulk/project arena, instead of simply trying to fill ships.”

That foundational philosophy is still in play, and while the company had refocused its operations on the breakbulk/project cargo business of the Americas when it became independent, it now has, under the SAL Heavy Lift Group banner, the opportunity to extend its global reach.

Global connections to and from the Americas could be well-supported by another important differentiator at Intermarine: “We maintain a regular liner schedule, while providing the flexibility and level of service that our customers require,” Seeg said to Breakbulk.

Intermarine Americas LLC has been operating five to 10 multipurpose vessels on short- and long-term charter within the Americas. Its fleet of geared ‘tweendeck vessels have a lift capacity of up to 400 tonnes. Cargo capacity ranges up to 11,326 cubic meters.

The company has been running weekly trips from its load center in Houston to the Caribbean/North

Coast South Americas, to its main ports in Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, Colombia, Mexico and other destinations in the region. There are also monthly sailings to Brazil/Argentina and regular voyages to the West Coast of South America.

In addition to operating multipurpose carriers and offering technical services such as customized method statements for safe and efficient loads, Intermarine was recently appointed by United Heavy Lift to promote its commercial maritime business for cargoes controlled in North America.

MARKET PROSPECTS

Seeg said the word “uncertainty” is overused, and indicated Intermarine’s key business strength is about helping customers adjust. He said: “Our customers are struggling with their needs and the needs of their customers constantly changing as everyone tries to move forward in this market. We regularly see our customers fixing cargoes with us to one destination, and then having to change to another destination, or having the readiness slip back, or move up to become critically urgent.

“We view our relationship with our customers as a partnership, and not just a client/vendor relationship.

Through regular and open communication, we work with our customers to find the best option – in terms of service and price – to work through their constantly changing requirements.”

Intermarine, SAL Heavy Lift and their global transportation competitors face a plethora of obstacles in the current heavy-lift, project cargo and breakbulk markets, but this new venture may prove to be a boon. There is industry-wide concern for stagnating demand for multipurpose carriers, related in large part to the impact of Covid-19 and lingering low oil prices on investment, but more diverse geographies and other variables that steer the global multipurpose sector allow room for some enthusiasm.

Seeg, for one, is optimistic for the future: “The core of Intermarine’s business is oil and gas, mining, and the power sectors. While oil and gas and commodity prices are down now, www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 35

PROFILE

Intermarine’s flexibility has helped the company act on opportunities as they develop.

CREDIT: INTERMARINE

and that is affecting cargo moves, the population on our planet continues to grow. There will always be a need for raw materials, and Intermarine plays a vital role in the supply chain that supports these industries.”

A few weeks before the announcement about the SAL investment, Seeg said the task at hand, for Intermarine, was: “to work with our customers to meet their needs as their needs develop and change. The market today is different than it was 12 months ago, and it will be different again in 12 months. We must be quick and remain flexible.” The new relationship with SAL Heavy Lift might just be the “flexibility” Seeg meant.

VALUE MEETS CHANGE

As Seeg sees it, Intermarine’s flexibility has saved the day many a time for customers. Flexibility helps the company act on opportunities as they develop. In one example, while visiting a customer in Korea, the customer realized that a competitor’s vessel was suddenly delayed, but the move was urgent. “I was able to pull our teams together to find a solution on the spot – putting in a vessel two days later to load the client’s cargo and get the cargo moving,” Seeg said.

36 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Seeg stressed the importance of being equipped to quickly find solutions and make decisions, and the importance of being in the right place and talking to the right people. “The market will continue to change and evolve, and we must be able to adapt and evolve with it,” he said.

“Intermarine has evolved over the years … as our markets and our customers have evolved. Over the past 30 years, we expanded into areas where we could provide value to our customers, and also reduced our activities in areas where we could no longer add value as markets and customers changed,” Seeg said, adding: “The challenges we face today will also present opportunities, and we will adapt and expand our services as these opportunities present themselves.”

One opportunity comes from the nature of the cargo itself. For example, Seeg said, in the last two decades, “we have seen heavy-lifts get heavier. In fact, I can recall when a 50-tonne piece was considered a heavy-lift.”

Other opportunities come from the cargo origin points: “Twenty years ago, there was a push away from local suppliers, with many of our customers stretching their supply chain and sourcing all manner of goods from Asia. These days we see a move toward regional sourcing and fabrication.”

To guide a multipurpose carrier in 2020, communication is key: “In order to be successful as a company, we need to make sure that we all understand the task at hand and that we are all moving in the same direction. Management needs to hear from our sales, technical, operational, and support teams regarding the market and our customers’ views on the market. Only by working together can we continue to make good decisions,” Seeg said.

Andersen summarized the future of Intermarine under the SAL Heavy Lift Group venture in an early October media release: “The joining of Intermarine with the SAL organization is a perfect matching of two companies which share the same basic set of values and business philosophy yet with a different fleet of vessels, resources and outreach. In combination, it makes an unmatched setup in cross-Atlantic trading and intra-Americas heavy lift shipping. I have invested in this venture, as I see great prospects in bringing the Intermarine brand and business onwards under the helm and support

by SAL Heavy Lift as a top brand in the heavy lift shipping industry.” BB Based in the U.S., Lori Musser is a veteran shipping industry writer.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

REGIONAL REVIEW

SHIFTING SANDS IN THE GULF Crisis Brings GCC Recruitment Challenges into Focus

BY SIMON WEST

T

he energy-based, projectdriven economies of the Middle East have been hit hard by the twin shocks of Covid-19 and record-low oil prices.

The rocky road to recovery starts now, and although too early to fully understand the long-term impact on jobs, the crisis has brought changing employment patterns in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries into sharp focus.

Well before Covid-19 struck, the reputation of the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – as high-paying, tax-free hotspots was on the wane.

38 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Since the last economic downturn five years ago, professionals in the region have seen their salaries frozen and generous benefit packages cut as cost-conscious companies tightened their belts to stay competitive. Workforces have been trimmed, executive jobs have been localized and valueadded tax has been introduced.

The party, it seemed, was already coming to an end.

“Salaries and day rates have not returned to the previous highs, and given the current instability, this will probably remain the case,” said James O’Neill, Oman country manager for UK-based oil, gas and energy recruitment firm Petroplan.

Fears though that declining compensation packages would trigger a

mass expat exodus may have been premature, particularly in states such as the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, where non-nationals make up the bulk of the labor force.

In much of the region, lower rents and living costs have offset stagnant earnings, while foreign workers are still exempt from paying income tax.

According to O’Neill, the Middle East remains a desirable destination for expat professionals. But given the cutback in perks such as housing, healthcare cover and education allowances for children, the type of candidate choosing to move to the GCC is changing.

“It is partly true to say that the expat workforce is getting younger, and our experience shows that more ISSUE 6 / 2020

deugro has found that salary expectations from nationals can be unrealistic in the region.

CREDIT: deugro

In the UAE, an in-country value program was launched two years ago by ADNOC to encourage more local engagement in the sector.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

people are coming to work in the Middle East on a single status basis with the family remaining in their home country,” O’Neill said.

LOCAL CONTENT CHALLENGES

Candidate profiles are also evolving due to a region-wide localization drive that may intensify as part of post-pandemic economic stimulus plans.

Throughout the GCC, states have put into place initiatives designed to boost local content in the private sector, forcing industries such as breakbulk and project cargo to pay closer attention to the staff they hire and the contractors they do business with.

Some countries have been more demanding than others.

Saudi Arabia’s sweeping Saudization program, for example, grades firms according to the number of Saudi nationals in their ranks, while in the UAE, an in-country value program launched two years ago by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., or ADNOC, aims to spur opportunities for local suppliers and expand the private sector’s role in developing the local economy.

“You get incentives if you hire a local Emirati in Abu Dhabi, but it is not that you need to actually hire Emiratis,” said Steffen Behrens, UAE country manager at specialized logistics firm deugro. “In Saudi Arabia, and in Oman it is the same, you are being forced in certain positions to hire locals otherwise you will not actually get the license, or you will not be able to bid for certain contracts and projects.”

Companies looking to recruit locally – either to cover a departing expat or to comply with local content rules – face a number of challenges.

Despite government efforts to boost the desirability of private sector employment, many nationals in the GCC still opt for a career in the public sector, where jobs can be more

secure, wages more competitive and working weeks shorter.

Salary expectations for nationals are often unrealistic, while skills shortages in many industries mean some companies struggle to replace expat talent.

“We were lately looking for a senior position in our UAE organization and we really looked into the market as to what was available, to actually find somebody suitable and maybe even consider an Emirati,” Behrens said.

“But the result of that was no.

First of all we were not able to find somebody that met the kind of criteria we were looking for. And secondly the issue was that even if we had somebody that was able to present the kind of CV we were looking for, the salary expectation was just not as per our budget and not as per what we would traditionally be paying for such a position. So after a couple of weeks we basically ruled out hiring a national.

“In Oman and Saudi Arabia you will find locals with a decent salary expectation but usually not trained very well. Hence you need to invest a lot of time to get them up to speed in a specific job field such as project logistics.” www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 39

REGIONAL REVIEW

TRAINING NEEDS TO THE FORE

To address this, and ready the local workforce for private sector careers, GCC countries are investing heavily in education and training, often as part of broader structural reforms focused on long-term economic sustainability.

The Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 for example, an ambitious plan designed to wean the city off oil and gas, calls for an overhaul of its education system to ensure graduates are better prepared for careers in construction, manufacturing and other productive sectors. As it stands, nationals in Abu Dhabi make up just 11 percent of the workforce, according to city government figures.

In Qatar and Kuwait, similar programs to improve education

standards have been launched, while governments throughout the Gulf are facilitating study periods abroad or at international universities with satellite campuses in the region.

Companies in the sector are also doing their part to ensure local employees are equipped with the right skills and training to thrive in careers in breakbulk and project cargo logistics.

Belgium-based heavy-lift specialist Sarens – with its Middle East headquarters in Bahrain, the GCC’s smallest state with a population of 1.6 million, of which more than half are non-nationals – has invested heavily in engineering, HR and finance.

According to Philippe Verdeure, Sarens’ managing director for projects in the Asia-Pacific and Middle

FOCUS ON SURVIVAL Plans to address changing employment dynamics in the Middle East will likely get moved to the back burner while breakbulk and project cargo companies chart a course out of the current economic crisis.

The prognosis remains grim: GCC states are expected to see a 7.1 percent drop in GDP this year, the International Monetary Fund said in a July report, with the global slump in oil demand slashing export receipts and widening budget deficits.

On the ground, supply chains have been disrupted and mobility restricted.

GDP is forecast to swing back into the black next year, the IMF said, but lengthy lockdowns to contain the virus have taken their toll on industrial activity. According to Steffen Behrens, UAE country manager at specialized logistics firm deugro, major engineering, procurement and construction projects in the region have either been put on ice or canceled.

“If I look back at the budget discussions we had last year, the outlook for this year was actually quite positive, with a number of projects in the pipeline. Unfortunately, that has just not materialized.”

“The problem we are having right now – and this is very specific for the project logistics industry – is that we

40 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

are running into a gap. And even if now they start awarding, let us say at the end of the year … there is nothing that is going to move until June. That is the biggest risk for the region.”

Another major risk for countries such as the UAE and Qatar with their high non-national populations is staff redundancies: as contracts have dried up, companies have been forced to slash jobs to save costs.

Tens of thousands of blue-collar migrant workers, many of them from the Indian Subcontinent, have either returned to their own countries or have been left in limbo – no job and no way to pay for flights home.

Expat executives who have been laid off also face an uncertain future.

Those made redundant in the UAE for example, where residency is linked to employment, have little choice but to find another job or leave the country.

And as non-nationals across the board pack their bags and pull up stakes, populations shrink, and economies suffer.

“Nobody knows as yet how many expats had to leave or will leave in the near future. The industry has been hit and many good people have been let go,” a Dubai-based legal source told Breakbulk. “Once trade picks up again it will take some time to replace experienced people.”

East region, this has allowed the company to maintain a high localization content that gives it pole position on many projects.

“Particularly in Bahrain, we’re extremely pleased with the quality of education and the skills of the local talents we hire,” Verdeure said. “A certain amount of foreign supervision and guidance, however, is always required. But we do expect that amount to be thinning with time.”

Verdeure also put to flight fears that as recruitment dynamics in the region evolve, the industry may not appeal to local jobseekers.

“Breakbulk and heavy-lifting will always be attractive to a certain portion of the engineering and technical crowd, for sure. Merely for the fact that what we do is unique and often a once-in-a-lifetime operation.”

Still, some organizations are responding to these shifting sands by increasing their level of outsourcing to so-called high-value centers in Asia and Latin America, where skilled manpower for certain positions can be found at a much lower cost.

And as labor markets come under severe pressure from Covid-19, the strategy is likely to rise in the short to mid-term.

“Basically all the design work and the drawings, the material takeoffs, the quantities, the follow-ups – all these things happen through the outsourced entity,” said Mandar Apte, project manager Mandar Apte at oil and gas Technip FMC services company TechnipFMC. “But essential work such as the specifications, the progress reporting, the project management – these kind of things mainly happen from the GCC. Of course it depends on company to company. What is outsourced and what is not is eventually a balance between what the client wants and what the contractor can do. But the trend is that more and more work is being outsourced,” Apte said.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

Sarens project cargo work in the Middle East has included work on Expo 2020 in Dubai, slated to open in October, but put back until October 2021 due to the pandemic, and stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

CREDIT: SARENS

STILL SHOWING RESILIENCE

Project cargo professionals speaking to Breakbulk all underlined the GCC’s resilience, as well as its exciting potential for industrial development over the next decade.

Although hydrocarbon contracts are still likely to dominate, economic transformation plans aimed at attracting foreign investment and diversifying economies away from oil and gas, such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, are expected to spark billions of dollars of spending in energy, transport infrastructure, mining and other sectors.

In renewables, regional activity is heating up: installed solar and wind capacity could rise 18-fold over the next five years to more than 57 gigawatts, or GW, according to a recent report by U.S.-based market research firm Frost and Sullivan. The expansion will call for US$182 billion of investments, the report said.

Some exciting developments are already underway. The 2-GW Al Dhafra solar energy plant in Abu Dhabi will be the largest single-site photovoltaic project in the world, with operations slated to begin in early 2022, while Saudi Arabia’s first ever utility-scale wind farm, the 400-megawatt Dumat Al Jandal project, located 900 kilometers north of Riyadh in northern Al-Jawf, is also expected to come online in 2022. The facility is being developed by a consortium led

by France-based EDF Renewables and UAE green energy firm Masdar.

Events such as Expo 2020 in Dubai, slated to open in October, but put back until October 2021 due to the pandemic, and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which is seeing seven new stadiums built from scratch, are also major sources of special project contracts.

“I see things picking up, albeit at a slow pace. But at least it is not a full stop, it is not completely stagnant, things are starting,” TechnipFMC’s Apte said. And when the economy finally recovers, breakbulk and project cargo companies will want to be sure to have the best and brightest talent at their disposal. BB Colombia-based Simon West is a freelance journalist specializing in energy and biofuels news and market movements in the Americas.

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ISSUE 6 / 2020

MARKET SPOTLIGHT

SAUDI’S PROJECT COMMITMENT

BY SIMON WEST

GCC Country Still Expects Grand Development

S

audi Arabia’s grand plan to open up its crude-dependent economy over the next decade is forging ahead, despite a deep recession caused by the double blow of Covid-19 and the oil price collapse.

Saudi Vision 2030, unveiled

by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman four years ago, is seeking to diversify the nation away from oil and usher in a new era of economic sustainability. The government’s National Industrial Development and Logistics Program, launched last year, is leading the charge to boost the GDP contribution of industry, mining, logistics and energy to 1.2 trillion Saudi riyals, or about US$320 billion, by 2030.

Billions of dollars of investments 44 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

have been slated for new industrial projects, with breakbulk and project cargo movers already in the thick of the action.

Moataz Hussein, regional project and energy manager for logistics and freight forwarding firm Expeditors, said the current crisis is unlikely to knock long-term Saudi construction plans off course.

“It might still have its effect on pushing back some of the projects or at least pushing back the deadlines a bit, but at the end of the day I think all the plans in place are going to go forward,” Hussein said. “Once the pandemic is over I expect Saudi Arabia will go full throttle on the direction of that Vision 2030.”

Running parallel to the economic

shake-up is a nationwide policy designed to boost the role of male and female Saudi nationals in the private sector, dubbed Saudization.

More far-reaching than other local content initiatives in Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, countries, Saudization in one form or another has been around since at least the 1980s, but the policy gained momentum following the oil price crash six years ago and the launch of Vision 2030.

A focus on upping private-sector opportunities for Saudi citizens – and reducing an over-reliance on foreign workers – is seen as a surefire way to tackle local unemployment, which in this year’s first quarter stood at 11.8 percent.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

Saudization hiring policies affect breakbulk and project cargo companies operating in the Kingdom.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

In line with the economic reforms, authorities are hoping that the Saudization drive will create 1.6 million new jobs across a range of industries by 2030, reducing unemployment to 7 percent over the same period.

“The Saudi government has a long-standing goal to bring its large native population into the private sector so that its economy can effectively function when peak oil demand takes hold and the Saudi government is no longer able to provide a generous welfare state for its citizens through public jobs and direct subsidies,” said Ryan Bohl, Middle East and North Africa analyst at U.S.-based consultancy Stratfor.

MEETING REGULATIONS

Saudization hiring policies, which affect breakbulk and project cargo companies operating in the Kingdom, are regulated by Nitaqat, a system that gauges the number of Saudi employees in a firm’s workforce against the number of non-nationals.

Companies are given colored ratings based on their compliance with the labor ministry’s local content targets – which vary from industry to industry – with red the lowest, then low green, medium green, high green and finally platinum.

A government decree in August for example ruled that 20 percent of all private sector engineering jobs from 2021 must be given to Saudi nationals.

The quota applies to private firms with

five or more employees in engineering professions, and aims to create at least 7,000 new positions.

The majority of businesses operating in Saudi Arabia are ranked in “safe color zones,” according to the labor ministry, but those that pay scant attention to Nitaqat targets inevitably face problems.

“Red being the lowest rating, companies in this zone face challenges in terms of ease of doing business,” said Rafael Vicens, head of global projects and industry solutions, Middle East and Africa, for Germany-based logistics specialist DB Schenker. “If you are in the green or the platinum zone, you will get easier access to government permits, for example, to move cargo on the roads. One has the facility to hire expats, therefore their visa procurement process is easier.”

Operators in the red zone may also have trouble opening new branch facilities with the labor office, changing the occupations of their foreign employees and securing pre-qualification for government contracts.

According to Vicens, multinational project logistics firms typically employ Saudi nationals to manage functions such as accounting, sales and administrative roles, which require strong local knowledge. Expats on the other hand are either hired as skilled labor or in executive positions.

Companies operating elsewhere in the GCC, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, where non-nationals make up the bulk of the labor force, often encounter skills shortages for many professions. Either education systems are not up to scratch, or poor training leaves candidates unprepared for private sector careers.

Not so in Saudi Arabia, Hussein said.

“Saudi is not short at all with the local talent. When project logistics look to hire the right people, the right talents are there in the market, people who have the skills, the knowledge and the qualifications to meet the positions.

And I think Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is just making sure to open the doors and giving this local talent an opportunity.” www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 45

MARKET SPOTLIGHT

LOCAL CONTENT LAWS

The success of the policy, from a Saudi standpoint at least, is yet to be seen. Unemployment in the country remains high and is likely to worsen amid the Covid-19 crisis, while many executive positions continue to be held by expats. Deeper structural reforms to Saudi Arabia’s subsidy-laden political economy may be needed to achieve long-term employment goals, Stratfor’s Bohl said.

A much-lauded result of the localization drive, however, has been the rise in female employment, especially in industries traditionally dominated by men. The Saudization of the private jobs sector has gone hand in hand with the easing of long-standing social restrictions, such as the right to travel abroad without needing permission from a male guardian, or the government’s headline-grabbing decision two years ago to quash a decades-old law banning women from driving.

And as boundaries disappear, more

female workers are joining the sector’s ranks.

King Abdullah Port, a privately owned terminal located on the Red Sea coast and a big handler of Saudi-bound project cargo, said it had broken the gender employment mold by hiring only women to staff its control rooms.

“More than 80 Saudi women work in control rooms, management, IT and engineering, the last being one of the final frontiers for Saudi women,” a representative at King Abdullah Port told Breakbulk. “The vast majority of women hail from the surrounding area, a section of Saudi Arabia that for years has offered little in the way of employment beyond the petroleum facilities located there.”

While Saudization has focused on boosting opportunities for its citizens, the policy is unlikely to close the door when it comes to project cargo involvement from other nations, with the success of Vision 2030 hinging on the kingdom’s ability to lure overseas

investment and know-how to expand the private sector into an engine for growth.

“The Saudization program has helped and continues to help bring more employment opportunities for local nationals,” said Haider Hussain, a Dubai-based partner at immigration law firm Fragomen. “The labor ministry has been in pursuit to balance that nationalization effort along with ensuring that the foreign expertise also continues to enter the Saudi workforce.”

And as the country’s efforts to reform the economy ramp up in line with its Vision 2030, that expertise will be called on to help the buildout of new industries.

RENEWABLES DRIVE CONTINUES

Although crude still accounts for about two-thirds of government budget revenues, and state-owned oil producer Aramco remains one of King Abdullah Port broke the gender mold by hiring only women to staff its control rooms.

CREDIT: KING ABDULLAH PORT

46 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

ISSUE 6 / 2020

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MARKET SPOTLIGHT

“Cities are getting built from scratch, so opportunities are going to be there.”

– Moataz Hussein, Expeditors

the world’s most profitable companies, pressure to diversify the nation’s domestic energy mix is building, with the focus on expanding renewable capacity.

According to the government, Saudi Arabia is targeting 60 gigawatts, or GW, of installed green energy capacity by 2030, of which 40 GW would come from PV solar plants, 2.6 GW from concentrated solar power, 16 GW from wind turbines and the remainder from other renewable sources.

Development of a sustainable sector, which could intensify amid the fallout from Covid-19 and the low oil

48 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

price environment, is expected to create up to 750,000 jobs over the next decade, the U.S.-Saudi Business Council said.

Although solar dominates, the expansion of wind power, of more interest to breakbulk movers, is starting to shape up.

Saudi Arabia’s first-ever utilityscale wind farm, the 400-megawatt, or MW, Dumat Al Jandal project in northern Al-Jawf region, is slated to start commercial operations in 2022.

Once completed, the facility, developed by a consortium led by France’s EDF Renewables and the UAE’s Masdar, will be the largest wind project in the Gulf.

In June, a first batch of 20 Vestas V150-4.2 MW wind turbines arrived at Saudi’s Duba Port on the Red Sea coast, marking a milestone for the project.

According to Saudi shipping company Faisal M. Higgi and Associates,

which acted as the port agency for vessels delivering the turbines, additional cargo for the project is expected to arrive at Duba by the end of the year.

Managing Director Abdulaziz Higgi told Breakbulk that multinational heavy-lift and logistics specialists were needed to support the buildout of new industrial sectors in Saudi Arabia. “Such global companies could be considered as a kind of school and education place for Saudis to get experience and knowledge about such projects in the forthcoming years,” Higgi said.

The country also has plans for offshore wind development.

Last year, Italy’s Saipem and Abu Dhabi-based renewables investor Plambeck Emirates signed a memorandum of understanding to build a 500-MW floating wind farm off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Further details on the project, including location, have not yet been disclosed.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

MARKET SPOTLIGHT

PROJECTS ABOUND

Aside from renewables, exciting opportunities that point to a steady stream of contracts over the next decade include an expansion of the Two Holy Mosques, a US$800 billion plan to double the size of capital city Riyadh and the development of socalled smart cities such as Neom on the Red Sea Coast.

Meaning “New Future,” the US$500 billion Neom project was first announced in 2017, and when completed will include towns, ports, enterprise zones, sports stadiums and tourist destinations. The city, scheduled for completion in 2025, will be built on 5G technology and powered by renewable energy, and will eventually be home to 1 million people, according to the project’s official website.

“Cities are getting built from scratch, so opportunities are going to be there,” Expeditors’ Hussein

said. “I expect in the next period to hear about more and more projects in Neom that companies like us, as project logistics and service providers, will surely be able to add value to. Because it is not only about the city itself, but also each city like that will require a lot of support industries to be around it, such as port facilities, solar parks and desalination plants.”

Like everywhere though, supply chains throughout the region have been severely hit by the pandemic, causing project delays and bottlenecks. The crisis has pushed Saudi Arabia into recession, with the International Monetary Fund predicting the economy will shrink 6.8 percent this year.

Aramco, too, is feeling the strain: the world’s largest oil exporter reported in August that its second quarter profits had sunk by 73 percent as a result of lower sales. The crisis has forced the producer to cut

its capital expenditure plans this year and next.

Jobs markets have also been thrown into chaos, with the extent of the pandemic’s longer-term consequences yet to be revealed.

According to Fragomen’s Hussain, lockdown restrictions have slashed mobility and cross-border travel, forcing local businesses to temporarily adapt their hiring plans and to focus more on the local Saudi workforce to ensure companies keep ticking over.

“It will be interesting to see whether businesses will continue with the same strategy once Saudi Arabia opens its doors to the world again,” Hussain said. BB Colombia-based Simon West is a freelance journalist specializing in energy and biofuels news and market movements in the Americas.

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www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 49

CASE STUDY

BY PAUL SCOTT ABBOTT

NEXT STOP MARS Emirati Mission Conquers Pandemic-related Hurdles

B

efore embarking on a 306-million-mile (492-million-kilometer), 200-day trek to Martian orbit, 30 tonnes of spacecraft and associated equipment had to complete journeys by air, land and sea from Colorado to Dubai to a remote Japanese island launch site – a process intensified by a pandemicimpacted Earth.

Between February and April, the Hope orbiter craft – the centerpiece of the United Arab Emirates Space Agency’s Emirates Mars Mission – traversed the globe along with related spacebound cargo on flights totaling nearly 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) in addition to moves by road and water.

“The realization that we had to run against the Covid clock was where things got complicated,” Omar Al Shehhi, assembly, integration and testing lead for the UAE agency’s Emirates Mars Mission, told Breakbulk.

Adjustments to initial plans, Al Shehhi said, were necessary to meet the narrow July 2020 launch window – related to the once-every-two-years ideal alignment of Earth and Mars – so as to have the uncrewed Hope orbiter circling Mars before the 50-year anniversary in December 2021 of the independence of the United Arab Emirates.

Of course, when UAE leaders announced the intended mission in 2014, they could not have predicted that Earth would be grappling with a global health crisis in the year of the launch. What they did already know was that having all the equipment in place for liftoff was complex anyway, 50 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

as the highly sensitive spacecraft was to be fabricated in the western U.S. and undergo preparations in the UAE before being launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center.

PROCESS INTENSIFIES

“The transport process of spacecraft in general is very complicated because of the nature of the craft and its instruments and their sensitivity to temperature, humidity, dust and movement,” Al Shehhi said. “What was supposed to be routine turned out to be mission-critical.

“With added issues triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, the team plan to manage the process had to be doubled, tag-teaming with quarantine requirements necessitating team members be in place for 14 days,” he continued.

“As a result, the launch team had to travel three weeks earlier than the aircraft – several weeks before the probe’s scheduled transfer date.”

Al Shehhi, a former Emirates Airlines avionics engineer, was among eight Emirati space engineers who were in place in Japan earlier than originally scheduled and who kept daily logs of their temperatures as part of efforts to ensure safety of themselves and the launch site. Plans to bring along some of the engineers’ children to enjoy the liftoff had to be shelved due to pandemic concerns.

True to original plans, an Antonov AN-124 heavy-lift cargo aircraft, operated by Ulyanovsk, Russia-based Volga-Dnepr Airlines, was used for the longest legs of the spacecraft’s earthly travels.

The Hope spacecraft undergoes shock testing in a cleanroom at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder as it is readied for transport to the United Arab Emirates and its Japanese island launch site.

CREDIT: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES SPACE AGENCY

After assembly and completion of environmental and shock tests and other preparations at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, a shipment of five units with a total weight of 30 tonnes was ready Feb. 8 for the 21-hour flight to the UAE, including a fueling stopover at Keflavik, Iceland.

‘MOBILE CLEANROOM’

While some of the cargo flew in standard 20-foot-long shipping containers, the sensitive Hope probe – also known as the EMM Observatory – was enveloped in specialty packaging, according to Brian Pramann, Emirates Mars Mission assembly integration and test manager at the University of Colorado facility. (Other U.S. entities engaged in the endeavor have included Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley.)

“The container was essentially a mobile cleanroom with custom temperature and humidity control, active particulate and nonvolatile air filtration, continuous gaseous nitrogen purging, shock isolation, and active temperature, humidity and acceleration monitoring equipment,” Pramann said.

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Emirates Mars Mission engineers discuss the Hope probe in a cleanroom at Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center before the craft’s placement in a customized container for air shipment to Japan.

CREDIT: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES SPACE AGENCY

trucking equipment for the 43-mile (69-kilometer) over-the-road trip to Denver International Airport.

There the cargo was loaded onto a Volga-Dnepr AN-124 plane for the 7,900-mile (12,714-kilometer) flight to Al Maktoum International Airport, south of Dubai, and moved 42 miles (68 kilometers) by specialized truck to Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai.

Following two months of further testing and preparations at the UAE space center, the spacecraft was ready for another flight, this time for a journey of some 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) to Chubu Centrair International Airport, on an artificial island south of Nagoya, in central Japan.

Again, according to Al Shehhi, the Hope probe took flight within “a miniature portable cleanroom,” with both temperature and humidity kept within a fixed range and a nitrogen purge system protecting delicate instruments from dust. Other mechanical and electrical equipment shipped with the Hope craft included ground handling and operations systems.

VIBRATIONS AVERTED

The over-the-road trip to the airport, which would normally take 45 minutes, instead took two hours, Al Shehhi said, with low-speed travel required “to reduce the vibrations generated from bumps in the road.”

The Hope craft and related cargoes

Expert crew members complete loading of the containerized Hope Mars probe onto a Volga-Dnepr Airlines AN-124 cargo plane at Al Maktoum International Airport in preparation for flight to Japan.

CREDIT: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES SPACE AGENCY

once again were loaded onto a VolgaDnepr AN-124 airplane, accompanied by a team of Emirati engineers monitoring the shipment’s safety. A flight route presenting the least likelihood of turbulence was selected to minimize vibrations that could impact the hypersensitive equipment. The handoff between the Dubai engineers who accompanied the shipment and the team that had gone ahead to Japan was accomplished without face-to-face contact to reduce the chance of Covid-19 infection spread.

Finally, a team led by Al Shehhi oversaw the unloading of the cargo from the aircraft, its short transport to the island airport’s quay, its 44-hour trip by sea freighter to Shimama Port on Tanegashima Island in far southern Japan and its 12-mile (19-kilometer) over-the-road move to Tanegashima Space Center, run by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. The team waited until nightfall for that last little leg “to travel along quieter roads,” Al Shehhi said.

Overall, the trip from the UAE space center to the Japanese launch site spanned 83 working hours from April 20 to 24, according to Al Shehhi.

On July 19, the Hope probe, perched atop a two-stage Mitsubishi H2A launch platform, lifted off from the Japanese space center, carrying Arab world aspirations and scientific experiments for studying the Martian atmosphere throughout two years

of planned orbit around the Red Planet, which it is on target to reach in February, well ahead of the Dec. 2 celebration of the half-century anniversary of the establishment of the independent United Arab Emirates. BB A professional journalist for nearly 50 years, U.S.-based Paul Scott Abbott has focused on transportation topics since the late 1980s.

The Hope orbiter, atop an H2A rocket, launches July 19 on the Emirates Mars Mission from Tanegashima Space Center, on a southern Japan island.

CREDIT: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES SPACE AGENCY

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 51

LOGISTICS PERSPECTIVE

CRISIS CONTINUITY

BY NAMRATA NADKARNI

Covid-19 Choke Points Force Gear Shift

T

he past six months have seen a radically changed landscape for the heavylift and project cargo industry. The Covid-19 pandemic created bottlenecks not only in terms of equipment and supplies but also with employees. Factories and worksites shut down around the globe as countries closed their borders to any aspect of trade that required humanto-human contact, creating shortages of supplies and bringing many projects to a standstill.

While steps were taken to largely address the health and safety requirements to keep businesses functioning, these required companies to be flexible and think outside the box as many of the contingency measures that would ordinarily have been put in place were not applicable to this particular scenario.

“During the first months of the pandemic, mainly as a consequence of the stoppage of the activity of certain suppliers due to the confinement of their personnel, there were delays

in some scheduled supplies,” recalls Paula Lacruz Rodriguez, of Spanish civil engineering company Ferrovial. “In specific cases, there were also delays due to problems with transport companies and customs clearance. Additionally, there were also problems with subcontractors, again due to workers’ confinement and positive cases of Covid-19.”

Although the situation has largely resolved itself, the company has adapted its operations policies to increase the delivery times allotted to the supply of critical items, and has also sourced alternative suppliers for many of its materials. This strategy is likely to pay off in coming months, as many countries report second waves of the virus.

LINGERING IMPACT

The hiccups in sourcing and transporting materials have varied from country to country and across industries – and in some cases, engineering, procurement and construction companies have reported

that clients have made the decision to hold off on their projects. “We are noticing that a significant number of projects are being postponed and a small percentage cancelled,” Kleopatra Kyrimi, group marketing and communications manager for heavy-lift and engineering transport firm Sarens’ Spanish arm, told Breakbulk.

She added that Sarens experienced a slowdown in many of the regions that it operates in, but these were largely related to puttingsafety measures in place to manage Covid19 and were resolved reasonably quickly. “Construction work did not stop completely in any of the countries we operate in,” Kyrimi said, pointing out that the company adopted a diversification approach to insulate it from the worst of the economic effects of the pandemic.

“For us, diversification of the business is key, offering us alternatives when we encounter slowdowns in certain sectors of our work,” she said. The company also implemented

Top: Sarens notes that a significant number of projects have been postponed and a small percentage canceled. CREDIT: SARENS

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ISSUE 6 / 2020

stringent safety measures to manage its risk and took steps to reduce its exposure to factors such as slowdowns and supply bottlenecks.

Perhaps the biggest impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is the vulnerabilities it has exposed in the supply chain, which continues to fluctuate in response to a large number of factors including local outbreaks of the virus, statuses of borders, access to supplies, market sentiment and more.

“Everyone has pressed the pause button while they are waiting to see how this pans out,” said Richard Jones, global sales manager at project freight forwarder Bertling Logistics. Jones said Richard Jones the real concern was rate Bertling Logistics fluctuation for transport, rather than personnel capacity.

“Some people are saying that the rates will go through the roof and others are saying that they are about to crash. We may see that prices have jumped up US$500 overnight, or that a service we have been using suddenly no longer exists. You can’t make guarantees to clients like you used to be able to make as all availability is subject to Covid-19 and quarantine,” he said.

Jones believes that the new operating environment also presents opportunities for those companies that have the ability to adapt to change quickly, not just to the challenges of the pandemic, but also to meet client needs, which may evolve as the current situation continues.

“To survive this we need to be collaborative,” he said. “Customers are going to want to work with forwarders that are able to come up with solutions, so it will not be about the cheapest price. Rather, the market will be relationship and trust driven.”

The uncertainty, combined with a change in the global sentiment towards a more nationalistic outlook, will reshape global trade, the supply chain and sustainability in the coming years,” he added, particularly in the UK, where the impact of the pandemic will intersect with Brexit to create new challenges for freight forwarders.

INFRASTRUCTURE OUTLOOK

However, Jones’ long-term outlook for the project cargo and EPC sectors remains positive. “The global prospects are good as we transition to a carbon-free economy and invest in infrastructure and IT, digitalization and process efficiency,” he said, adding that the pandemic has revealed areas in the supply chain that will need urgent investment and may see government and private sector investment in the near future.

Jones’ view is echoed by Sarens’ Kyrimi, who said that the very nature of critical infrastructure work

allows engineering companies to be relatively insulated from economic recessions.

“Despite the crisis, city infrastructures, sustainable energy projects, and other work will still be priorities in the 2020-2021 market, as they involve structures and goods that are still necessary for society to function even if lockdowns are necessary,” Kyrimi said. “We have observed, in fact, that certain city projects during the lockdowns progressed, taking advantage of the reduced circulation that allowed for faster and more comfortable executions.

“Mega projects in the nuclear sector and other wind projects, for instance, did not stop as they are considered matters of respective national importance, and stopping them would make no sense as that would generate financial penalties for the clients that would throw the projects off budget.”

Breakbulk ports also continued with “business as usual.” The port of

Associated British Ports’ Port of Ipswich completed a heavy-lift operation of a 178-tonne transformer, as part of a National Grid infrastructure project, in early June. CREDIT: ABP

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 53

Production and international cargo movements have declined rapidly since the start of the pandemic.

CREDIT: AAL Shipping

Ipswich, which is managed by Associated British Ports, has seen consistent cargo throughput of various agricultural and infrastructure materials, welcoming 115 vessels carrying 400,000 tonnes of cargo in the first three months since the start of the first UK lockdown on March 23, 2020. It also successfully completed a heavy-lift operation involving a 178-tonne transformer, as part of a National Grid infrastructure project, in early June.

ROCKY GLOBAL RECOVERY

Although critical infrastructure projects continue apace and carriers are still securing work, the wider project cargo industry is unlikely to see a quick return to pre-pandemic operating levels. “Our fleet is fully employed,

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ISSUE 6 / 2020

LOGISTICS PERSPECTIVE

albeit at reduced freight rates,” explained Valentin Gherciu, global operations manager at AAL Shipping, observing that the business and public upheaval caused by the pandemic has resulted in a sharp decline in appetite for investment and project greenlighting.

“The triage of services we currently provide of tailor-made tramp solutions, scheduled liner and semi-liner services offer the market choice and seamless connectivity worldwide. The issue that we face as a carrier is that no two regions are responding the same way to current market challenges, and their trading patterns and cargo flows are subject to change at any time.

“As forecast, production and international cargo movements have declined rapidly since the start of the outbreak,” Gherciu continued.

“Initially, the slowdown of imports and exports took hold in China, then Korea and Japan – in all cases resulting in the forced reduction of shipments, delayed project cargo readiness and in many cases cargo bookings cancellations. Within the carrier sector too, there is no appetite for immediate fleet expansion and [there are] vessel charterers with distressed ships sitting idle worldwide and unemployed.”

He saw the rapid virus contagion worldwide as impacting major long-haul trade lanes and causing a “geo-shifting” affect. While China is slowly recovering, cargo demand has dropped from trading partners in Oceania, Middle East, Europe and the U.S. Gherciu said that the past few months have exposed weaknesses in the supply chain ranging from freezing of receivables from Chinese accounts to severe liquidity issues around the globe. “Nevertheless, AAL’s long-term focus on ‘key accounts’ comprising majors in every industry sector – whose payment terms are set and stable – has mitigated our negative exposure,” he said.

Gherciu is a strong advocate for the creation and use of fiscal policy instruments to spur the economy into recovery. “The most important measure that can be implemented at this time within any market is fiscal government support for corporate business and capital injection into

economies. This is necessary to stimulate trade and cargo movement,” he said, adding that the maritime sector in particular will require this support to maintain trade levels and prevent companies from collapsing under financial duress.

“More than at any other time in our history, we need to stay alert and flexible and focus on those trade lanes and services model structures that

allow us to mitigate risk and, at the same time, provide the range of added value services that our customers need,” Gherciu concluded. BB Namrata Nadkarni is a Londonbased freelance journalist with 17 years of experience covering maritime, offshore, ports and the logistics sector.

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www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 55

LOGISTICS PERSPECTIVE

Companies like deugro have managed to keep cargo moving over the last six months by working together with all our partners in the project logistics supply chain.

ADDED FLEX

CREDIT: deugro

Executive Vice President Tim Killen gives his views on how deugro group has adjusted to meet the challenges of the pandemic Q: Has your company experienced any sourcing issues or bottlenecks on projects this year, and do you anticipate any coming up in the near future?

A: We have all faced unprecedented challenges due to the impact of Covid-19 and the global economic fallout, which has been felt throughout the global project logistics industry.

Every mode of transportation has been affected and has experienced disruptions and volatility, including longer transit times and higher rates.

Some routes were completely unavailable due to ports and borders closures, which also led to a regional imbalance of equipment. Initially, as the pandemic began to arrive in Europe, there was an increasing trend to shift critical project equipment from ocean to air transportation where possible. The air freight market was hugely affected for an extended period of time due to the fact that about 80 percent of passenger aircrafts were grounded.

There was substantial shortage of belly aircraft capacities, which in turn led to much longer lead times and substantially increased freight costs — up to five times higher than usually expected.

56  BREAKBULK MAGAZINE  www.breakbulk.com

Nevertheless, early in 2020 we saw positive forecasts for the global project market, and deugro started the year with a strong project pipeline covering a diverse range of industries. For those projects already in execution, we needed to focus on ensuring that we could design and deliver solutions to both the operational and the business continuity challenges we face.

Q: Have these been resolved, or have you found a way to work around them?

A: Moving project cargo during the global Covid-19 pandemic has been more challenging than ever, requiring our technical specialists to provide the utmost focus on safety, security, vendor management, schedule, and commercials to provide end-to-end delivery for our clients.

This has been a mammoth effort, but we have successfully managed to keep cargo moving over the last six months by working together with all our partners in the project logistics supply chain to ensure we can manage safety, schedule and commercial challenges together. Working hard to identify and predict risk, then taking the correct, decisive actions to help mitigate

as much of the impact of the current situation as we can to deliver success and safety.

For example, in the air freight market, the past months have been extremely busy and interesting for us.

The landscape of pricing and aircraft availability was changing quickly, and we were working day and night to keep our finger on the pulse of the rapidly changing situation. deugro has created transfer routing solutions, for example from Far East via Europe to Latin America, to compensate for temporary suspensions of several carriers and/or to reduce costs compared with the limited available routings from the origin markets.

The air freight market remains critically important, to support the urgent movement of cargo while many regular supply chains are disrupted.

Especially, for ongoing oil and gas projects, we see increasing demand for air cargo as an expedited solution to close the gap caused by Covid-19 disruptions that affected production schedules and traditional transport routes. We might see similar dynamics when some of the projects that have been delayed or put on hold return to active stages.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

Q: What changes to your procurement and operational policies have you implemented as a result of the pandemic?

A: deugro continues to focus on the safety and security of our employees, clients and partners, to follow our own high-quality standard, yet Covid-19 has severely impacted logistics supply chains globally. The deugro organization continues to maintain business operations, fulfill urgent demands, and manage the operational and commercial challenge faced against an environment of uncertainty and significant business disruption across the globe.

We have concentrated our efforts on managing supply disruptions from our top tier suppliers, while initiating new short-term sourcing processes to meet the demands faced due to supply constraints and commercial volatility. We are now proactively looking at the medium-term supply base, driving cost savings, commitment and security of supply by working intelligently and collaboratively with our partners to build a stronger and more resilient businesses for the future.

Q: Are you seeing any trends among your customers as a direct result of the pandemic and has it affected the way in which they interact with you?

A: We are likely to see a significant effect on capital investment decisions in new projects, across multiple industries and being delayed or canceled. Going forward, the project landscape will be different; investors and operators will take a much more cautious approach in their commercial spending and risk taking.

For most logistics companies it will be very difficult to plan and predict what the business environment will look like in 2021 and beyond.

Most companies must deal with many uncertainties, as most industries remain fickle until such time the global pandemic is manageable. At the same time, we see a lot of geopolitical unstableness which adds to already challenging times.

“The power industry today is a mature market for freight forwarders to operate in, however there are still areas where added value can be provided.”

– Tim Killen, deugro

As we experienced following the 2014-2015 oil crisis, there were opportunities for smaller and lowerrisk projects with independent developers to secure positive investment decisions. It was when these projects moved forward that it provided the project cargo industry opportunities, while also assisting to raise confidence in the market at the same time. As the oil and gas industry may continue to be heavily impacted by low demand and lower commodity rates, industries supporting a lower carbon future, such as power, renewables, infrastructure and mining, will likely gain investment momentum and growth in the post-Covid-19 world.

With a focus on renewable energies we see increasing activities in the Far East and the Americas, especially in the offshore industry. The power industry today is a mature market for freight forwarders to operate in, however there are still areas where added value can be provided. By investing time, energy and experience to understand client needs and the challenges of industry verticals, project freight forwarders can provide solution-focused, safe and cost-effective expertise in project logistics. It is the role of the freight forwarder to manage the challenges in logistics along the supply chain by detailed engineering studies, operational planning, and risk analysis from beginning to end of the project life cycle. deugro provides a fully integrated, highly technical, safe

and secure project solution to clients’ cargo while maintaining control and visibility every step of the way.

Q: Have you seen a slowdown in any types of orders or projects compared with others?

A: In the oil and gas sector, Covid19 has caused substantial economic slowdown globally. In combination with the oil production war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, this has led to the oil price hitting US$25 dollars per barrel, the lowest it has been for more than two decades. We hear from multiple clients in the oil and gas industry that many large projects are being delayed, cancelled or put on hold.

We are seeing a clearly visible trend in oil projects, which appear to have been hit harder and have not just suffered a temporary demand shock.

Many energy producers have adjusted their long-term oil price outlook, writing off huge amounts of their exploration and production assets.

At the same time, we at deugro group are seeing a steady flow of positive news from our clients regarding liquid natural gas (LNG) and chemical projects. Our unparalleled track record with shore-based and floating LNG projects keeps us busy. Our strategic efforts to pursue projects in Africa seem to be very welcome by our clients. BB Namrata Nadkarni assisted with the interview. www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 57

SHIPPING TRENDS

Collection of ice samples north of Svalbard, which is being done in order to achieve a better understanding of ice types in Norway’s area of responsibility.

CREDIT: KYSTVERKET

COLD FRONT Arctic Still a Forbidden Frontier |

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onquering Earth’s final frontier of the Arctic has been an icy ambition of shipping for decades. Talk of the vast potential to save money and time passaging the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route has held varying degrees of attention since the route was first conquered by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s Vega expedition back in the 1800s.

The world has evolved much since that early Arctic exploration voyage, but there is still a long way to go before the region is “conquered” by shipping.

There remain myriad challenges to safe ship operation in the far north and a post-Covid reassertion of sustainability, coupled with heavy pressure on the finances of both shippers and operators may suppress modern day Arctic exploration.

Calls from U.S.-based non-profit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy may set a tone for Arctic shipping in the 2020s. Through the launch of an Arctic Corporate Shipping Pledge, the group has appealed to shippers to seriously consider their Arctic ambitions. The Pledge asks shippers to either avoid Arctic transshipment routes altogether or to promote precautionary Arctic shipping practices. Hapag-Lloyd, 58 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

BY CARLY FIELDS

Kuehne+Nagel, CMA CGM and MSC have all signed up.

Andreas Kjøl, senior advisor at the Norwegian Coastal Administration, known as Kystverket, said that to totally ban Arctic traffic would be extremely difficult for Arctic States, including for Norway, which relies on Arctic trades for tourism and fishing activities. For him, greater regulation is a more effective route to safer shipping in the region: “We have not come to the stage where we would recommend stopping,” he said, “but our aim is to regulate more, monitor more and give better services to operators and captains for decision support.”

As a multipurpose vessel operator, SAL is acutely aware of the challenges in this delicate environment and remains committed to environmentally sustainable shipping. Whether the Covid crisis and increased sustainability movements will dent interest in Arctic waters shipments remains to be seen. But with or without Covid, SAL Managing Director Peter Sandberg said, sustainability and protection of the environment are central to the future of the shipping industry. Increased regulations – with an emphasis on the environment – could

even increase the attractiveness of the Northern Sea Route in future, he said, as more environmentally friendly and technology-enabled ships enter the fleet.

REGULATING ARCTIC TRADE When it comes to regulations governing Arctic trades, the Polar Code is the sector’s bible. The Code entered into force on Jan. 1, 2017 and covers the full range of design, construction, equipment, operational, training, search and rescue, and environmental protection matters relevant to ships operating in the inhospitable waters surrounding the two poles.

The Guideline for Arctic Marine Risk Assessment was added to the polar ship operations’ arsenal this year.

The work program for the Guideline was initiated by Kystverket under the aegis of the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group, or EPPR. The project proposal was submitted in 2017 with the project starting in earnest in 2018 and launched in April this year.

The Guideline is a web-based tool for conducting Arctic marine risk assessments. It contains best practice methods and data sources for conducting regional and area-wide risk

ISSUE 6 / 2020

assessments concerned with ship traffic and merchant marine operations in the Arctic. The guideline aims to improve and ease the process of conducting Arctic-specific risk assessments by creating a common ground and incorporating unique Arctic risk factors. It was developed in cooperation by the EPPR, Kystverket, and classification society DNV GL. Marine risk assessments were, until now, conducted based on information on generic conditions and risk factors found in waters around the world. But the unforgiving Arctic environment demands specificity.

“Operating in Arctic waters includes risks unlike other regions in the world, such as sea ice, rapidly changing weather conditions and vast distances to emergency response resources,” Jens Peter Holst-Andersen, chair of EPPR, said on the launch of the Guideline. “EPPR identified the need for a common approach to marine risk assessments in the Arctic after screening existing methods used in general marine risk assessments. We concluded that the methodologies, tools and data cover a variety of needs and purposes, but that specific Arctic risk influencing factors were rarely addressed.”

While the IMO’s Polar Code was clearly designed with the ship operator in mind, the Guideline was primarily developed for national and regional authorities. However, it does give a useful understanding of the general risk situation of operating in the Arctic and it also contains information which is relevant to safe ship operations in Polar waters.

Kystverket’s Kjøl said that there is always room for improvement when it comes to regulating safe operations in Arctic waters. New technologies, he added, are helping to make Arctic transits safer, such as improved broadband coverage, better communications, and the recent launch of highly elliptical orbit satellites to ensure continuous coverage above 75 degrees North. “These will give the possibility of high resolution and more frequent updates of ice and weather information that are crucial in those areas.”

COUNTING ON CREW

SAL’s Sandberg said that while the Guideline and the Polar Code certainly facilitate safe ship operations in Arctic waters, nothing compares to having an experienced master and crew.

“Firstly, you need a suitable icestrengthened vessel and then the people,” he said. “It requires knowledge to read the ice and its behavior, and not only the ice itself, but also about icing and other weather phenomenon which are typical in the Arctic, as well as suitable communication tools. These conditions have an impact on a ship’s equipment such as radar, antennas and so on.” SAL has its own “Winter manual” which is distributed to its fleet.

For Sandberg the biggest risk is an inexperienced crew with an unsuitable vessel in the wrong place at the wrong time. “This would lead to disaster, not only for the vessel, its crew and owner, but for the delicate environment as well.”

SAL’s three newest P1-type ships are E3 iceclassed, equivalent to Finnish/Swedish ice class 1A. They join six PK 116 type MPVs with the same ice class in the operator’s fleet. SAL sees ice class notation Peter Sandberg as “added value” for its newest SAL ships. Sandberg explained that ice-classed vessels give flexibility to “operate in a bigger market area during wintertime and open opportunities for business.” He added that SAL is considering ice class notations for future orders because they allow operations in Arctic waters even during winter season.

Esper Boel is team leader for Agency and Projects at Royal Arctic Line, or RAL, a Greenlandic government-owned

POPULATION AND MINERAL GROWTH Royal Arctic Line is looking ahead to a surge in project cargo and breakbulk cargoes to support planned growth of Greenland’s capital city Nuuk.

The government’s strategy for Nuuk is targeting 30,000 inhabitants by 2030; the current population is about 18,000.

Esper Boel, team leader for Agency and Projects at Royal Arctic Line, said that there will be a massive need for housing and related infrastructure for that growth, project work that RAL will be intimately involved with.

Boel is also excited about the rare earth mining project Kvanefjeld in the south of the country. The large-scale rare earth project has the potential to become the most significant western world producer of rare earths with more than 1 billion tonnes of mineral resources delineated in the project area to-date.

To keep up with current and expected demand, RAL has implemented a vessel-sharing agreement with Eimskip, Iceland’s oldest shipping company.

Population growth aspirations for Nuuk will provide steady project work for RAL. CREDIT: RAL

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 59

SAL’s Svenja moves project cargo in icy waters around Rauma in Finland.

CREDIT: SAL

company with roots dating back to 1774.

RAL sees itself as a lifeline service to Greenland, and with that comes an obligation to carry all kinds of transports, small, big, light or heavy. That it understands ship operations in Polar waters is an understatement. RAL’s breadand-butter work is carrying big cranes, building material, machinery and more to and around Greenland. Once a year it

COMPLEX CARGO MADE EASY

also sends a vessel to the Antarctic with provisions. It has noted that ice shelves there are getting much higher, meaning that it is becoming more difficult to operate with a crane.

Boel described RAL as “world champions of operating in the Arctic.”

“We do not take risks and we prepare well,” he said. Some of the more remote destinations require RAL to carry barges

and trucks as cargo to be able to load the real cargo to shore. RAL also has to work smartly within the very short summer with its 24-hour sunlight to enable project work to proceed as planned.

Boel raised concerns about the challenges of Arctic water for inexperienced ship operators. He noted that a regular voyage to the east coast of Greenland this year to bring provisions to the Danish Arctic Command had to break through 70 kilometers of a broad band of ice to reach its destination.

He is particularly worried about the patchwork charting of depths in Polar waters. “We have big challenges with this,” he said. “Last year, RAL was involved in possible oil exploration on the east coast of Greenland, but we found that the information on water depths and currents was very poor.” The project is on hold and RAL has asked for more accurate charting for when the project is revisited. Boel said that new technology such as satellite mapping

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ISSUE 6 / 2020

SHIPPING TRENDS

should allow for easier and more accurate charting of Arctic waters.

Sandberg sees the Northern Sea Route as a viable option for full loads from Asia to northern Europe or for very time sensitive cargoes, although that does depend on the ice situation at the time of shipment.

TRAFFIC CONCERNS

Kjøl is concerned about rising traffic in Arctic waters. This year has seen the second-lowest ice extent, allowing more operators into Arctic waters, bringing increased risks with them. Kystverket contacted the operators of four vessels this year to inform them that it saw risks connected with their planned voyages.

“We contacted the cargo owner to get the schedule, and then we contacted each of the ship operators and suggested that they avoid routes close to the coast so that we could have a better response time in case something happened,” Kjøl said.

As a coastal Arctic state, Norway is looking to establish, through the IMO, recommended routes in its waters to make it easier to track and monitor Arctic traffic. These routes will take into account infrastructure, communications, seabed mapping, ice reporting, restrictions and more.

Crucially, these will also allow the administration to narrow down the areas for search and rescue.

“This could also be in cooperation with other Arctic Council States, including Greenland,” Kjøl said.

In the future, Kystverket also plans to develop its reporting system for traffic, or it may choose to extend its ship reporting system to cover international Arctic waters. Trine Beate Solevågseide, international coordinator in the Maritime Safety Department at Kystverket, and program administrator for the Guideline, stressed the differentiation between national and international waters in the Arctic. “It

is limited what we can do in international waters,” she said.

A possible follow-on project to the Guideline will see Norway and the Arctic Council develop the Guideline with a focus on risk treatments and mitigations to further enhance the system. “Our main goal is to get people to use it and to give more support for ship operators.”

This project is at a preliminary stage and still needs EPPR approval and funding.

If passaging through the Arctic was easy, offering the route as standard for breakbulk and project cargo would be a no-brainer. But there remain many challenges to overcome, and while regulatory progress is helping to clear the snow from the path, a cold wind still blows against Arctic transits. BB Carly Fields has reported on the shipping industry for the past 20 years, covering bunkers and broking and much in between.

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 61

ADVERTORIAL

CATCHING A FUGITIVE Controlling Dust in Port Operations

S

ignificant atmospheric dust arises from the mechanical disturbance of granular material exposed to the air. Dust generated from these open sources is termed “fugitive” because it is not discharged to the atmosphere in a confined flow stream.

Today’s ports and terminals are under an ever-mounting burden to comply with air and water quality regulations when handling bulk materials such as cement, fly ash, coal, pet coke and other bulk materials. Fugitive dust escaping from dry bulk operations can also be an expensive annoyance to neighboring commodities that can be contaminated by these operations.

Cargo handling and movement to and from storage areas may cause runoff, spills or leakage of elements, which could possibly include toxic substances, biohazardous organic matter, or oily compounds.

Dry bulk operations can cause substantial damage to water quality – and therefore also to marine life and local ecosystems. These consequences may include bacterial and viral contamination of commercial fish and shellfish, depletion of oxygen in water, and bioaccumulation of certain toxins in fish.

Dust dispersal on land may cover vegetation and change local habitat conditions. If toxic or harmful substances are included in dust emissions, the health of working port employees and neighboring residential communities are threatened.

The potential health effects of particle pollution are related to the makeup and size of the particles.

The smallest particles pose the 62 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

cement and fly ash have become a valued addition to any port operations. The problem, however, is that many ports lack the equipment and infrastructure to handle such products while staying within the regulatory parameters. To date, pneumatic and “enclosed screw” systems have been the “go to” equipment, but the high cost and maintenance along with sporadic contracts has made this type of equipment almost obsolete in the North American market with its special characteristics.

Capt. Georges LaRoche.

CREDIT: PAGE MACRAE ENGINEERING

greatest health problems because they can be inhaled deeply into the lungs. The health effects of inhaling particle pollution include respiratory distress and increased severity of lung and heart disease, according to a New Hampshire Department of Health Services 2019 report.

Fugitive dust can also reduce visibility, which can result in driving or work-site accidents.

Increasingly stricter regulations, air monitoring and public pressure has made it much harder to complete handling operations of dusty cargoes such as cement, coal and grain. Several port terminals around North America are experiencing a growing number of costly delays due to fugitive dust issues during the processes.

The introduction of new goods and valuable cargoes is a key component to the sustainability and growth of any port. With the major push to renew decaying public and private infrastructure in North America, and construction of new infrastructure, new cargoes such as

So, what are the most commonly used and upcoming solutions for fugitive dust emissions in the ports?

In North America, the most common method of dust suppression during the processes has been to use “misting,” tarping and warehouse storage of the materials. Problems occur with these methods, as misting or watering down of the cargo can often not only damage cargo but produce toxic runoff into the water system.

Globally, some companies have tried new solutions, and an innovative and well-established company In New Zealand, has addressed fugitive dust in several ports around Australasia, Taiwan, South America, and now North America. In New Zealand and Australia, regulations tightened years ago so that only absolute minimal fugitive dust emissions are tolerated in most ports in both countries, where several have air monitoring stations. Page Macrae Engineering Ltd., a family owned company founded in 1955, recognized this issue years ago and set in motion the creation and production of Dust Suppressing Hoppers and Crane Grabs (unique patented grab seal), especially designed to minimize or eliminate any leakage of fine, dusty cargoes ISSUE 6 / 2020

during handling. They are now the leading producer and supplier of Port Dust Suppression equipment in the world, as well as many other types of cargo-handling equipment, including automated container loading systems and remote release log lifters.

Port of Newcastle – Hopper Grab Solution The Port of Newcastle is the largest port on Australia’s east coast.

In 2018, Page Macrae Engineering supplied two new Enviro-Max 50e eco-hoppers and mechanical chain grabs to the Port of Newcastle to be used for the unloading of a variety of products including phosphate, fertilizer and animal feed, therefore enabling the company to meet environmental compliance requirements.

Above: Enviro-Max50e Lima, Peru.

Below: Adelaide, Australia Enviro-Max50e Adelaide - Linx 1.

“Page Macrae Engineering is committed to environmental protection and the principles of sustainable development,” said Peter Swan, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, Page Macrae Engineering.

The time to address the issues of particulate matter dispersion in both air and water is here, and these challenges are being addressed on many fronts. Where fugitive dust has not yet reached the priority level of carbon and other gaseous emissions in ports, the problems that do derive from the larger particles produced by fugitive dust are clear and evident.

Capt. Georges LaRoche holds a Masters license and spent 30 years sailing internationally and on the Great Lakes. He lives in Ottawa, Canada and now works with Page Macrae Engineering. n www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 63

HEARD AT BREAKBULK EUROPE DIGITAL SPECIAL

Carriers Find Themselves in a Spot Navigating Beyond Covid-19, Market Downturns

BY GARY BURROWS

Breakbulk asked industry ocean carriers for three words to describe the current ocean transport market.

The results were as mixed up as the current operating environment.

During a Breakbulk365 webinar session, which was part of Breakbulk Europe’s Digital Special event, BBC Chartering’s Ulrich Ulrichs simply gave the answer of: “spot.”

Other panelist went with four words. “Living in interesting times,” responded SAL Heavy Lift’s Jens Baumgarten. “Uniquely unprecedented and unpredictable,” said Felix Schoeller of AAL Shipping, while Dominik Stehle of United Heavy Lift, answered, “Uncertainty is never positive.”

Ben Collins of MSC kept it to three words: “Challenging, demanding, uncertain.”

The carrier executives agreed that the double-whammy of the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the global economy, coupled with depressed commodity prices, particularly oil and gas, have placed the breakbulk and project cargo spot market under severe pressure.

And carriers’ required compliance with the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 low-sulfur fuel requirements served to exacerbate the market.

“The black swan Covid-19 arrived and suddenly the bunker discussion was not a big topic anymore,” said Ulrichs, CEO of BBC Chartering.

“The last couple of years have been tough, and I personally don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Stehle, chief commercial officer for UHL. On top of the external economic pressures, he said the multipurpose vessel fleet’s continued overcapacity is a “self-inflicted problem for the carrier community.”

“The market will only correct itself when new environmental rules are imposed and financial sources dry out,” he said. “Companies that create value will always sustain, and companies that can easily be replaced by another player will die.”

Cost control is first and foremost among carriers, “and it will remain that way for a long time to come,” as the heavily asset-based industry navigates forward, Stehle added.

“Whoever does not understand that will be forced out of business.”

OPPORTUNITIES

Schoeller, general manager, AAL Shipping, viewed the market circumstances as an opportunity to support clients as they face disrupted supply chains, by being responsive and flexible.

Baumgarten, SAL Heavy Lift’s commercial director, agreed, noting that while some markets struggle, opportunities have developed among renewable projects, as well as some rebounding in Asia, Africa and the U.S. Reacting to the evolving pandemic response, Ulrichs said, “comparatively, our industry has done reasonably well. Most carriers adapted and found new solutions.”

It has forced carriers to be “super flexible” to adapt to changing circumstances.

The market downturn also affords carriers the opportunity to look at their processes, systems and cost structures “to be efficient and lean and mean for the future,” Ulrichs said.

The evolving circumstances of the last six months has challenged the planning of shippers, receivers and carriers, and Collins, MSC’s global project cargo manager, said the carri-

Clockwise from top left: BBC’s Ulrich Ulrichs; MSC’s Ben Collins; Breakbulk’s Leslie Meredith; UHL’s Dominik Stehle; AAL Shipping’s Felix Schoeller; and SAL Heavy Lift’s Jens Baumgarten. CREDIT: HYVE GROUP

64 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

ISSUE 6 / 2020

er’s “thin-line management structure” has enabled it to be flexible and fluid.

While some carrier executives pointed to uptakes in some markets, Stehle said that even with rebounds in commodity pricing and solving Covid-19, the heavy-lift segment is still vulnerable to trade policies of big economies like the U.S. and China, with tariffs greatly impacting how materials are procured and sourced now and in the future.

There is already evidence of shifts to alternative sourcing, including near-shoring, but that is not possible in all markets, such as Europe and the U.S., “because the work force is simply too expensive,” Stehle said. “It always comes down to the bottomline price.”

Ulrichs added Russia and some Middle Eastern countries to the trade complexities. However, “the customer will find some way to source their product, and one day it comes from Europe or South America, then you have to be flexible and follow the cargo and adapt to the requirements of clients,” he said.

Schoeller said that despite some trade downturns, carriers should be resilient when serving their customers’ markets. “It’s prudent to look at trade routes and make smart decisions; not shift too quickly … because our customers rely on us.”

“It’s a spot-driven market,” added MSC’s Collins. “Carriers that have the best flexibility stand a better chance of taking what project cargo is out there. For the long term, we’ll have to see how it shakes out.”

CAPACITY CONCERNS

Ulrichs said that the MPV fleet requires further scrapping, and he is hopeful an increase in oil prices will revive oil and gas projects. “We need the oil prices to rise, then I think some of the older ships will get inefficient and disappear. There has been some scrapping activity, but I think the fleet will be at least stable if not shrink on the heavy-lift project carrier side.”

When asked at the webinar’s conclusion where the tipping point would be for oil prices to bring meaningful revival, responses fell within the US$70 to US$100 range to jumpstart projects, and also to raise bunker prices to help cull the market.

Most carriers concluded that there was little in the way of further mergers and acquisitions among carriers – or partnering with other industry verticals in order to expand the carriers’ range of product offerings.

“The time for speculative investments is over,” Stehle said. “Our strategy going forward is to only invest in assets we know that we can make money with … anything else does not make sense, because it’s so volatile you simply can’t afford anything.”

While assets change hands during mergers and acquisitions, that doesn’t remove capacity from the market, most of the carriers agreed.

However SAL’s Baumgarten did not believe that the industry has seen the end of mergers and acquisitions.

“The industry is still not healthy at all, on both sides … not only the shipping sector, but the freight forwarding sector and the client side … we will see more changes in the future.”

As if foreshadowing, SAL Heavy Lift on Oct. 5 said that it had acquired a “major stake” in Americas heavy-lift carrier Intermarine, which will operate as an independent brand.

MSC has grown its fleet without mergers and acquisitions, which Collins criticized for bringing limited benefit and a great expense to be honest. Staffing and costs tend to bloat. Further, the acquisitions often fail to retain the new business assumed as part of the acquisition.

“Many of the clients and forwarders feel a bit nervous to trust cargo to companies that recently acquired others,” he added.

UHL has entered into a partnership with Ocean 7 in Asia, but Stehle said that’s merely a “cost-sharing agreement.”

Ulrichs is reluctant to consider hooking up with other companies to extend the value chain beyond its core competencies. “If we were to try to expand beyond ocean transportation … we would get issues with a lot of our clients. We would be competing with them.”

He said BBC will stay close to clients, watching their plans for coming years and their requirements. “If we have beautiful ships that nobody wants, it doesn’t help much.”

BBC Chartering adapts to the market with its diverse range of vessels, both owned and chartered.

“But we need to be alert and very sharp to adjust, because you don’t charter and build ships overnight and you don’t get rid of ships overnight.”

Environmental regulations over the next 30 years should also impact the MPV fleet, Stehle said. “I’m hoping that it will drive older tonnage to the scrap yard.”

As vessels extend beyond an efficient life cycle, newbuildings will begin, but that is dependent upon the growth and development of alternative fuels – and the ability to source them on a global scale, carriers said.

Collins said MSC is “investing quite heavily in a biomass trial from Rotterdam.” However, “even if the trial proves successful … it needs to be available on a global scale to be able to support the industry. It can’t just be a few ports here and there.”

Developing the next generation of MPV vessels, as well as niche ships is challenging for such a small carrier segment, Ulrichs said. “We can let others try … and learn from them. If the big container guys have something that works, we can adopt that later because we are too small to stem these kinds of investments.

We can be a little bit smarter as we go.” BB View the webinar at: https:// breakbulk.com/Articles/carriers-findthemselves-in-a-spot www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 65

HEARD AT BREAKBULK EUROPE DIGITAL SPECIAL

Sustaining Through Covid-19 Focus on Sustainability More Vital than Ever Despite the dramatic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the drive towards sustainability must remain a core function within the logistics industry, agreed panelists of a Breakbulk365 webinar on Sept. 30.

Sophie Punte, executive director, Smart Freight Center, said the pandemic’s impact has three dimensions: economic, environmental and social.

“From seafarers to truck drivers and farmers, Covid affected so many people in society in so many ways,” she said during the webinar, which was part of the virtual Breakbulk Europe event.

If anything, the Covid crisis “is in a way a preview of what will happen in the world if we’re not making it more sustainable,” she added.

Roger Strevens, vice president – global sustainability, Wallenius Wilhelmsen, acknowledged that “it’s really apparent to us that this is a challenge bigger than ourselves.” However, “it’s not a time to step back and ease up on our vessels. We need to use this time to move toward a deeper level of impact on the business.”

“Covid hasn’t affected our vision and goals around sustainability,” said Jason Pratt, vice president – group health, safety and environment, DP World. “A few projects have been delayed, and we can’t always get

together in a collaborative way.

However it has strengthened us in a few areas. We became an essential service, we feed communities, deliver medical supplies and we need to keep our people safe.”

“For us, it’s most important to stay resilient and create good solutions,” said Uwe von Bargen, director for environmental and sustainability issues, bremenports. “We need to widen our view of topics, and what we need for the future resilience of our society … collaboration is necessary at local, regional and international levels.”

Paul Holthus, founding president and CEO, World Ocean Council, moderator of the panel said, in his opening remarks: “The logistics sector for a lot of people isn’t something that comes to mind immediately when thinking about direct ocean users. It’s that part of the network that holds together the diverse set of supply chains and operation of those supply chains.”

However, the logistics industry is “awakening” to the fact that sustainability is no longer a side issue, Punte said. The industry is realizing that integrating sustainability within business strategies brings internal and external stakeholder value, and that companies should make sustainability reporting

Clockwise from top left: Smart Freight Center’s Sophie Punte; DP World’s Jason Pratt; Wallenius Wilhelmsen’s Roger Strevens; Breakbulk’s Elizabeth Rankin; bremenports’ Uwe von Bargen; and World Ocean Council’s Paul Holthus. CREDIT: HYVE GROUP

66 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

part of its annual reports, rather than monitoring separately.

“Sustainability is not a bolt-on corporate activity,” Strevens said. “It’s central to our thinking and we expect to see it develop more widely across business. It must be deeply ingrained in corporate strategy. If you don’t have strategy, you have hope, but hope is not a strategy.”

Strevens said that three things are driving the importance of sustainability: regulation, innovation and demand.

The shipping industry is entering a “golden era of regulatory development,” he said. Innovation brings increased transparency, as industry embraces technology solutions.

For demand, he said breakbulk customers’ minimum requirements are increasing. “Unless you do X, Y or Z, you’re not going to be considered for the business,” he said.

In response to that demand, some logistics companies will question whether customers are willing to pay more for sustainability measures. However, he said solutions won’t always come with increased cost, but even so, those costs bring value in increasing resilience and reliability that value the customer and the provider. bremenports recognizes multiple drivers of sustainability, von Bargen said.

The German port group has developed its green port strategy over 10 years, and this has become a core of its corporate philosophy.

As an industry infrastructure provider, the port seeks sustainable solutions as it weighs future investment, and as it relates to the maritime business and the community surrounding the port. “We ask (stakeholders) what they need and want and look for good solutions to serve them.” BB View the webinar at: http:// breakbulk.com/Articles/sustainingthrough-covid-19 ISSUE 6 / 2020

Permanent Shift to Project New Normal Needed Industry Told to Wake and Wise Up to Disruption

BY CARLY FIELDS

The breakbulk industry needs to wake up and wise up. As the project cargo and breakbulk sector enters the fourth quarter of 2020, stakeholders need to realize that pandemic-related disruption is here to stay, according to industry professionals.

Speaking at a Breakbulk365 webinar, Arnoud Dekkers, commercial director at 4D Supply Chain Consulting, said the industry’s focus needs to shift to the new normal.

“We really need to change the mindset, be more proactive and adapt to the new normal.” Dekkers was speaking at the opening webinar to this year’s virtual Breakbulk Europe event held in October.

He said that companies today are asking a series of common questions: • How long can our business sustain disruption?

• What will our industry look like in the next 12 months?

• How long will it take for our business to recover after Covid?

• What steps can be taken to provide organizations with the resilience to ensure the required level of continuity.

“We see continued supply chain disruption, new outbreaks, and newly imposed restrictions – companies need to adapt and improve their processes, their people and their systems in order to survive,” Dekker said.

Other panelists noted that change is happening at a fast pace, with Javier Lopez Oliver, senior logistics project manager for Abengoa, explaining that the engineering, procurement and construction company

is now managing supply chains in a much more efficient way. “The reality is that you don’t know where disruption is going to happen, so you have to manage the short and long supply chain at the same time,” he said.

CARRIER CHALLENGES

Air and sea carriers on the panel spoke of the “numerous challenges” that they have faced since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, acknowledging that no one had experience to draw on to address a crisis of this kind.

AAL Shipping Managing Director Kyriacos Panayides noted a significant drop in cargo demand with growth rates moving from positive to negative. “That has been a real impact for the whole MPV industry and we felt it from all industry sectors,” he said.

However, he was more optimistic that positive growth would return in 2021.

Pointing up the potential bright spots, Panayides highlighted construction and renewables – particularly wind energy. However, project work in general is dependent on government stimulus, the impact of second waves of the pandemic and the discovery of a vaccine.

Ekaterina Andreeva, commercial director at Volga-Dnepr UK, said that she was optimistic for the project cargo sector, and noted that current volatility is dependent on individual countries and companies.

Volga Dnepr faced unusual competition during the pandemic: passenger aircraft transporting cargo in the passenger compartment, something that Andreeva described as the “new normal” for the company in 2020. Balancing out that competition was a new market for Volga

Dnepr: transporting personal protective equipment.

“Our normal project cargoes completely stopped as people sat and waited,” Andreeva said. “We discovered a new market, PPE, a brand new segment that only started this year.”

She noted a gradual recovery for traditional cargoes from June and expected that trend to continue.

TREATMENT OF CREWS

Johan-Paul Verschuure, project director at Rebel Group, asked the two carriers on the panel to compare the treatment of air crew and pilots with ships’ crew and captains over the pandemic.

Andreeva noted that while it was unclear at the start of the pandemic how pilots would be treated, frequent testing – sometimes before and after a flight – was quickly put in place to ensure that they could continue to work across borders.

Contrast this to the roadblocks to crew changes for ship operators, an issue which has turned into a humanitarian crisis for fatigued crew who are working well beyond their contracted rotations. Panayides said that AAL has had some crew stuck on board for 12 months and has lobbied hard with governments to change the way they treat ships’ crews.

“The crew is the crucial element of the trade,” he said. “We have started to see unrest on our ships, with some crew being psychologically affected by the fact that they are unable to return to their family.” BB View the webinar at: http://breakbulk.com/Articles/wake-up-wise-up www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 67

HEARD AT BREAKBULK EUROPE DIGITAL SPECIAL

Adopting Technology by Storm With Maturing Technologies, Industry Poised for Next Steps

BY GARY BURROWS

The breakbulk and project cargo industry faces a “perfect storm,” with technologies relatively mature and developing an abundance of data.

“I think the infrastructure is there, it needs to get to a point where technology is going to leverage the efficiency gains,” said Aljosja Beije, director of BlockLab, during a Breakbulk365 webinar on Oct. 1.

Solutions are not one-size-fits-all, nor found in one miracle innovation, Beije added during the session, which was part of the Breakbulk Europe Digital Special.

“It’s not going to be one single technology that’s going to transform the industry or allow us to get the efficiency gains we’re looking for,” he said. “It’s normally a combination of different technologies to solve a particular issue … the sum of these technologies is bigger than the parts.”

Of course with his company’s focus being blockchain solutions, he

acknowledges that focus, but notes, “there has been a lot of talk about using blockchain to solve all of the world’s problems.”

Blockchain allows validated data, with numerous proofs of data integrity. It also can certify the transfer of ownership in a shipping transaction, enabling a negotiable electronic bill of lading, the speakers said.

In response to an audience survey that asked which technologies would impact the breakbulk industry in the next five years, the panelists roughly agreed that internet of things, platforms and big data analytics were at the core, with perhaps artificial intelligence and blockchain shortly behind.

“Especially starting with big data analytics. That’s especially where freight forwarders and freight owners could do a lot more in this kind of field,” said Sven Hermann, managing director ProLog Innovation and professor for logistics and supply chain management, for the Northern Business School.

Which technologies will impact the breakbulk industry most in the next five years?

Big Data Analytics

23%

IoT 15% Blockchain 15% Platforms 14% Artificial Intelligence

9%

Drones and Aerial Vehicles 9% Autonomous Equipment and Vehicles

4%

Cloud

4%

Robotics and Automation

4%

3D Printing

3%

68 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

This cooperation would allow them to better evaluate projects, cooperate among different freight owners, in order to better plan projects. Further it would enable the freight owner to leverage logistics services providers, while helping LSPs to better evaluate and optimize the supply chain, he added.

‘CLOSE THE GAP’

In response to another survey question asking what is the biggest challenge for a company in implementing new technology, webinar viewers ranked “lack of vision/ strategy,” “lack of skills within the company,” and “training and development.”

Hermann agreed that he saw a lack of competence among small and mid-sized LSPs. “Closing the gap is something where we try to do it hand-in-hand with partners that are open to innovation,” he said. “Then it’s easier to close that gap than going it alone.”

Beije agreed. “Rather than trying to develop every functionality yourself, you’re linked to platforms where services are offered by providers that operate on that platform. Infrastructure is based on what you need and you can plug-and-play. I believe these processes, especially in the order processing, have huge potential to collaborate between different parties – even competitors – without sacrificing your unique selling points for your clients, while creating efficiencies.”

Beije did note that breakbulk requires more careful analysis of the types of cargoes and situations involved. “Compared to other areas of logistics or containerized trade, they have a huge advantage in that the industry is standardized – we’re

ISSUE 6 / 2020

“What we’ve seen in general is that people are aware digitalization is the way to go. Covid has brought remarkable speed in which people want to digitize their activities and processes.”

– Aljosja Beije

talking 20-foot or 40-foot .. and between the top 10 ports. The identification is easier.

“When you talk about breakbulk, it gets more complex, but also the infrastructure for projects in some countries is not that far developed.

Try to get a 5G connection in some of these areas.”

Leif Arne Strømmen, vice president – innovation and project logistics, G2 Ocean and the webinar’s moderator, noted that, as a carrier, “we have a long way to go to digitize the customer journey.”

He noted there are a number of digital freight forwarders and ecommerce providers up-and-coming that could help pull the breakbulk industry forward. “To some extent, we’ll compete with these players but also work with them; how does the breakbulk industry close the gap?”

Hermann said that, while blockchain participants operate in a trusted environment, he sees the need to “design something for a trustless environment,” which would operate with an electronic bill of lading.

Technologies can present all sorts of bells and whistles, Beije said, but it all reverts back to managing the data to improve processes.

“I was talking a couple of months ago with somebody from Tesla. They claim they have perfect visibility and they know exactly where the car is when it’s being transported.

“On the other hand, my car was delivered two months late,” he added.

What is your biggest challenge as a company when it comes to implementing new technology?

Lack of vision/strategy

26%

Lack of skills within company 23% Training and development 19% Finance issues

10%

Pushback from employees 10% Availability of data Other

10% 3%

What is most important reason to become more digital?

To improve efficiency of processes 41% To remain competitive

28%

To better meet customer expectations 22% To create more visibility throughout the supply chain 9%

COVID ACCELERATION

The worldwide shift to remote officing among businesses has helped to evolve the process of assimilating technologies, the speakers agreed.

“What we’ve seen in general is that people are aware digitalization is the way to go,” Beije said. “Covid has brought remarkable speed in which people want to digitize their activities and processes.”

Certainly the need to remove paper from the process during a pandemic is the most obvious push

towards going digital. “What we’ve seen in the last weeks and months is that all are satisfied to change to remote work,” Hermann said. We’ve given employees sufficient technologies and all companies are happy with it. Now we need to see how to manage going forward. Even when Covid is over and we can see each other again, I still think there will be lasting change on this people business.” BB View the webinar at: http:// breakbulk.com/Articles/adoptingtechnology-by-storm www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 69

THANK YOU TO THE INDUSTRY CONTRIBUTORS WHO KEPT OUR COMMUNITY TOGETHER IN 2020

4D Supply Chain Consulting • AAL Shipping • Abengoa • Allianz Risk Consulting • Amos Logistics • Amy Kan Consulting • Apostleship of the Sea - Diocese of Beaumont • ATS Trucking • AYOP Amsterdam Ijmuiden Offshore Ports • BBC Chartering • Bechtel Corp. • Bechtel Global Logistics • BIMCO • BlockLab • Blue Water Shipping • Bolloré Logistics • bremenports • COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers • Crowley • DHL Global Forwarding • DNV GL • DP World • Drewry • Export Import Bank of the U.S. • Fluor • Fracht USA • G2 Ocean • GE • GE Renewables • Gecko Robotics • Global Shippers Forum • Greenroad International Logistics • Juergen Osmers • Halliburton • Hansa Meyer Global Transport Co., Ltd. Thailand • Intermarine Americas • International Trade & Transportation • LV Shipping • Mammoet USA South Inc. • McDermott International Inc. • MSC • Nacero • NASA Johnson Space Center • NNR Global Logistics • Northrop Grumman • NuScale Power • Ørsted Energy • Page Macrae Engineering • Port Houston • Port of Beaumont • Powerchina Hubei Electric Engineering Corporation Limited • Proactive Change • ProLog Innovation • Rebel Group • SAL Heavy Lift • Seafarers International Union • Shey-Harding Executive Search • Smart Freight Centre • Spaceflight • Thomas Damsgaard • Tradepoint Atlantic • TSL Shipping & Trading • United Heavy Lift • University of Houston • UTC Overseas, Inc. • Vogt Power International • Volga-Dnepr • Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean • WISTA Germany • WISTA Netherlands • Wood • Wood Mackenzie • World Ocean Council

Watch them all on breakbulk.com/page/breakbulk365

As the world rides the pandemic roller coaster with countries opening and closing to travel, we at Breakbulk Events & Media continue with the weekly BreakbulkONE newsletter to keep the industry connected and supply welcome good news. Here’s a selection of subscriber favorites from the last few weeks.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM BRENT PHELPS, LONG-TIME PROJECT MANAGER Who said project cargo was only about modules, turbines, transformers, pipe, valves, structural steel, etc.?

What if I told you project cargo also consisted of pizza, ice cream, Christmas trees and more? These are some of the items that routinely shipped on our breakbulk vessels and aircraft charters while working for an U.S.based engineering, procurement and construction contractor.

I was the project logistics manager for an LNG plant being constructed in Algeria during the 1990s. The country was facing a civil war between the government and Islamic extremists.

I was stateside but our team at the jobsite could not leave the camp or jobsite. So, what do you do when you need a pizza delivered or to celebrate a holiday? Call the logistics guy in the States!

USAID was providing assistance to the project so the material had to be sourced in the States and transport had to be through U.S. carriers. For ocean transport we chose Lykes Lines and utilized the Port of

Charleston. Our breakbulk material was consolidated at our export packer in Charleston where it was export packed and sent to the port. Material that was already export packed was sent directly to the Port of Charleston’s Columbus Street Terminal. The call forward on the vessel was determined when we accumulated the necessary freight revenue tons for an inducement into the Algerian Port of Oran.

For air transport we utilized Emery Worldwide DC-8s out of Charlotte, North Carolina. The departure date was determined once we accumulated 50 tons of urgent cargo in Charlotte.

The breakbulk vessels and aircraft charters departed about once a month over a two-year period. I was present for the load-out of each vessel and aircraft. This gave jobsite the opportunity to provide me with a shopping list for each voyage and flight.

The shopping list began rather innocently with a simple request for a weight lifting magazine when I was loading out our first breakbulk vessel.

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I provided the magazine to the chief mate with instructions to hand it over to our personnel at the offloading port. Soon word spread at the jobsite.

For the next vessel I received a list with the employees’ names and what they were requesting. Requests included food items, clothing, toiletries, more magazines and anything else the folks could not get at jobsite with the lockdown. The list would get longer and longer to the point when I would soon be scheduling a full day just for shopping.

Thanksgiving was approaching and the jobsite had an idea on how to coordinate the dinner. Simple enough, just put it on our aircraft charter, including the gravy. The Thanksgiving dinner success led to Santa’s list the next month. Christmas trees, lights, decorations, candy and more food, were loaded on pallets and included on the aircraft’s manifest.

Then came the pizza request.

“Can you get some pizzas and throw them on the plane, we only need 25?”

Little did I know this would lead to the monthly fast-food requests for the remaining aircraft charters.

A logistics study/plan was needed for shipping fast food to Algeria. It included sourcing ice, how much, coolers with specific dimensions and timing the food pick-up to coordinate with the aircraft departure!

Over the two-year span of the project I think I was the most popular guy at the jobsite even though I didn’t physically work there.

So now you know the most important delivery to jobsite may not be that 100-ton transformer the project manager is screaming for, it might just be an extra-large pepperoni pizza. BBONE www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 71

What to Watch on Breakbulk Visit breakbulk.com/page/breakbulk365

Breakbulk Americas: The Digital Special • Business Outlook with Fluor, Intermarine Americas, LV Shipping, NNR Global Logistics • Offshore Wind Projects in the U.S. with Blue Water Shipping, GE Renewables, Ørsted Energy, Trade Point Atlantic, Wood Mackenzie • Could Remote Expert Technology Be the Next Big Thing? with Allianz Risk Consulting, ATS Trucking, Bechtel Corp., DHL • Space Cargo Logistics with ATK, a subsidiary of Northrup Grumman, NASA, Spaceflight, Volga-Dnepr

BreakbulkONE Show: Page Mcrae Engineering Offers Solutions to Common Port HS&E Problems Can Shippers Help Relieve Seafarer Crisis?

Drewry Looks at 2021 Three Ways

Breakbulk Europe: The Digital Special • Business Outlook: How the Cargo Sector Is Adapting to the New Normal with 4D Supply Chain Consulting, AAL Shipping, Abengoa, Rebel Group, Volga-Dnepr UK • Growing a Sustainable Future with bremenports, DP World, Smart Freight Centre, Wallenius Wilhelmsen, World Ocean Council • Carrier Check-in: Cargoes, Hotspots and the Road Ahead with AAL Shipping, BBC Chartering, MSC, SAL Heavy Lift, United Heavy Lift • The Breakbulk Technology Landscape: Building a Competitive Advantage with BlockLab, G2 Ocean, Hansa Meyer Global Transport Co., Ltd. Thailand, ProLog Innovation

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DREWRY LOOKS AT 2021 THREE WAYS In a special edition of the BreakbulkONE Show, senior analyst Susan Oatway from Drewry covered the top-level findings from the company’s recent report and give her insight on what this all means for the project cargo industry in 2021.

First, Oatway looked at the current state of the global project cargo fleet, which she broke down into four categories: premium project carrier, project carrier, multipurpose, multipurpose (no gear).

“The fleet at the moment is pretty static at around just under 3,200 vessels, representing 29.2 million deadweight tonnes,” Oatway said.

What concerns her is the fact that newSusan Oatway building orders Drewry have declined significantly over the last five years. Today there are only 63 vessels on order, less than 2 percent of the operating fleet.

“There’s no real growth in the overall fleet,” she said.

But that may not be all bad under today’s market conditions with the lower cargo volumes recorded over the past nine months. Further, demolitions have already reached the level seen in all of 2019.

“There might be a slight contraction in the fleet this year, which is definitely a good thing when demand is weak,” she said. “Then it’s much better to have fewer vessels competing for those cargoes.”

However, the decline in newbuildings points to a larger concern—an overall lack of optimism or confidence in this sector. “There’s been so little investment in this sector for the last three or four years, but at some point things will get better.”

Oatway’s report looks at MPV demand under three scenarios: base case, worst case and best case, which project different trajectories for the virus’ subsequent economic rebound.

When she first wrote her report in June, things were different. “The last time I wrote the report in June I couldn’t see any upside,” she said. “I had a worst case and I had an even more worst case, so the fact that I now have a best case, even though it’s only very slightly better, is promising.”

Under all three scenarios, she projects growth for the sector in 2021. “Our base case is something like 3 percent growth next year, best case is for 5 percent growth and our worst is only 1 percent growth, but it’s still growth.”

So where will demand come from?

Oatway points to the demand seen over the last three months from the manufacturing sector for quarantinerelated consumer goods. “While shipping demand fell off a cliff in March and April, it started to come back by June when consumers were at home thinking, “We need a new desk, a new flat screen. We saw growth in containerized demand that was much better than we thought it was going to be,” Oatway said. In turn, this took some of the pressure off container ship owners who might otherwise have looked for breakbulk cargoes.

Looking ahead, Oatway expects countries to kick-start their economies again by looking at domestic construction, which will positively impact volumes. Renewables is a big bright spot for the project cargo fleet as well.

People have seen the dramatic effects of reduced manufacturing, less driving and other positive impacts on the environment, which Oatway called a “game changer.”

“People now want cheap, friendly fuel and they have realized, when you close down everything you get a much cleaner environment,” Oatway said.

She added that although many projects were put on hold this year, she expects them to come back in 2021. BBONE ISSUE 6 / 2020

HOW TO BUILD A RESILIENT BUSINESS STRATEGY WITH FLUOR’S RAJ DESAI Breakbulk caught up with Raj Desai in his Houston office where he was in the midst of two days of strategy planning meetings. He set his computer to “away” and dedicated the next 20 minutes to sharing his insights on business resilience and the strategic planning process to the Breakbulk community. Here he set the stage for Breakbulk Americas’ Digital Special session “Business Outlook for Key Sectors.”

Q: How has the pandemic affected the project pipeline and projects ready to start construction?

Raj Desai: I can tell you from the industry viewpoint that projects Raj Desai are definitely affected. InvestFluor ment patterns have changed. Clients have basically gone back and suspended some of the projects and some of them have been cancelled. And, for the projects that are in existence, we have issues there as well because of a disrupted supply chain.

We had suppliers who could not go back and start their manufacturing operations in certain countries. This is something we saw broadly during March, April and May, but slowly and steadily we see things improving and the supply chain getting stabilized.

We’re getting our materials coming back on track and we expect a positive turn in the market pretty soon.

Q: Do you anticipate any longterm impact or shifts in where manufacturing will occur?

RD: We’re talking about a lot of changes in supply chain strategies internally and we are talking with our

big suppliers who have manufacturing capabilities overseas. This may take a new shape pretty soon.

We are also seeing consolidation of the supply market with some of the small manufacturers that will likely be consolidated with the bigger ones, and then some of them will go away altogether because of the current economic situation.

We do see that effect for sure, but at the same time I can tell you that we have seen manufacturers getting stronger over the last couple of months. They are restarting their manufacturing capabilities. While we’ll see a change, the changes may not be as drastic as people fear.

Q: What markets or sectors over the last few months have been the most resilient, and what do you attribute that to?

RD: In a broad sense, companies like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple can’t be put into any particular sector because of their market depth and breadth across the world.

If you look at the sectors that have done well, I would basically look at the pharma sector, the healthcare sector and the food sector.

The small retail discounters have also done quite well. As you move on into the other sectors where we have seen problems, these are basically manufacturers. But it all depends on how this whole thing is going to move forward, and I’m pretty optimistic.

Finally, the world has to go on. We will have all the basic things that we need. The human population will continue to exist, and it’s all about the timing on when we get the vaccines in place. And if we get those vaccines in place, I can tell you all these sectors are ready to rebound. That even includes the manufacturing sector, the industrial sector, as well as the oil and gas industry. There is no reason for them not to rebound because I don’t see a permanent deformation in any of these sectors so far.

“We have seen manufacturers getting stronger over the last couple of months.

They are restarting their manufacturing capabilities. While we’ll see a change, the changes may not be as drastic as people fear.”

– Raj Desai

Q: What does the strategic planning process look like when you’re viewing a somewhat uncertain landscape?

RD: The buzzword in the industry these days is resilience, and business resilience is what we’re talking about here. You can build in a set of contingencies. You can basically have modularity in terms of small sectors that can be affected, but would not collapse the entire system. Business diversity definitely helps a company be more resilient.

Those are some of the things that you can build in, but I see resilience as a continuous process. You go through and navigate through the different business environments that come over a period of time. If you are sitting at the wheel of your industrial sector, you are basically going to sense and then you are going to drive. You will steer and adjust your business. You sense what is changing and shift – you are responding and adapting. Then you will be able to transform your organization to get to the new path and make sure that the organization keeps on the path of progress. And then you flourish. BBONE Watch the “Business Outlook for Key Sectors” webinar at breakbulk. com/page/breakbulk365. www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 73

HOW TO ACHIEVE REAL SUSTAINABILITY WITH ROGER STREVENS Following a Breakbulk365 webinar on “Growing a Sustainable Future,” Roger Strevens, vice president of global sustainability for Wallenius Wilhelmsen, took the opportunity to answer additional viewer questions posed during the webinar. This is a selection of the best.

Q: What is the best way to keep sustainability a “hot topic” and keep the current momentum going?

Roger Strevens: The answer centers around realizing the increasing Roger Strevens significance of Wallenius Wilhelmsen sustainability to so many business stakeholders. The interests in sustainability of those stakeholders, whether they’re customers, lenders, investors, employees or authorities, can vary widely, however the trend is absolutely clear: they know more, they expect more and, therefore, the necessity to engage effectively is getting clearer all the time.

Considering the implications of sustainability are affecting many, if not all, corporate functions, companies are strongly advised to entrain it in their core business strategies, processes and culture. Moving sustainability from being a corporate sideshow to being a business-critical theme will, by definition, keep it in focus.

It’s also important that company leaders realise that their ability to set the agenda or the pace of change on sustainability is very limited; its growth to prominence will happen with or without them; so the choice executive leadership have is to get ahead of it or get left behind.

Lastly, there is a danger that many executives will fall victim to the frogin-the-kettle sustainability maxim.

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Sustainability is transforming industry in what tends to be a gradual, but inexorable way. For most executives, and for most of the time, there’ll be some other more immediately pressing issue to tend to. The risk then is that one day those executives will be confronted with the harsh realization that their business has been badly weakened by failing to engage, or worse, that they’re becoming obsolete because of it.

The best way to keep sustainability as a “hot topic” is a constant discussion with all parties in the industry – constant updates from top management all the way down. In that process, improvements and future development can be found.

Q: Do you have any future plans (globally maybe) concerning that?

RS: They say that culture eats strategy for breakfast. In the same way, companies that manage sustainability successfully have more than a good business-integrated sustainability strategy; they have made it a part of their culture, their purpose and their identity. By doing that they have moved beyond treating sustainability as an abstract plan or set of activities, they have bridged the gap to people and the way they feel, behave and work; they’ve made it relatable.

Of course, the foregoing is much more easily said than done, but it’s probably the most fundamental thing to get right because otherwise sustainability may always remain as somebody else’s job. That approach doesn’t work for safety or quality, and it won’t work for sustainability either. All hands on deck is what’s needed Q: Will sustainability take a backseat in the current Covid-19 environment?

RS: Except for the initial weeks of the Covid-19 emergency when there was massive disruption to everything, our experience would suggest that, if anything, sustainability has become more prominent than before. One

reason for that is the relationship between corporate resilience, which has emerged as a major topic du jour, and sustainability. Good sustainability management is future-oriented and sensitive to changes in the (business) environment, both of which are key attributes to good corporate resilience.

Aside from the foregoing, the premise of the question is interesting: why would sustainability take a backseat because of Covid-19? If the answer is that sustainability initiatives represent just a cost and burden then best course of action is to get better at sustainability, rather than to ditch it. Sustainability is transforming business and is, therefore, something that has to be contended with anyway; companies cannot opt out.

Moreover, any sustainability initiatives that are worth their salt should contribute as much to conventional business value creation as they do to driving positive change.

Q: Is the breakbulk and project cargo industry taking enough responsibility for the climate?

RS: Breakbulk and project cargo are no more or less immune to the climate agenda than any other segment of the industry. How well that fact is recognized by the participants (whether they’re shippers, forwarders or carriers ) in the segment varies widely … just as it does in other segments too.

Overall though, the trend is unmistakeable: steadily more shippers and forwarders are adopting supply chain sustainability management. The drivers for this include the need to mitigate (reputational and legal) risk, the need to improve supply chain resilience and the need to find strong logistics partners for what is clearly going to be a very disruptive period as the transition to low and zero emissions freight services really gets underway. It’s interesting to note that all of these factors are business motivated. Good business management and sustainable business management are two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other. BBONE ISSUE 6 / 2020

OFFSHORE WIND MANUFACTURING WILL SHIFT TO U.S. Danish firm Ørsted Energy is a pioneer in wind energy, but the company didn’t start out that way. John O’Keefe, head of marine affairs North America at Ørsted Energy, talks to Breakbulk about the company’s journey.

Q: Ørsted Energy was recently named the most sustainable corporation in the world

by Corporate Knights. How did the company move from being focused solely on oil & gas to John O’Keefe renewables?

John O’Keefe: Ørsted Energy Ørsted Energy decided early on that this transition was going to be necessary, and they decided to do it with the mindset that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. They envisioned a world that runs entirely on green energy.

We’ve made huge strides to get where we are today and we’re excited for the future.

Energy transitions historically are not an easy transition. While some view it as competition for other energy sources and job loss, we see this is an immense opportunity. We’re taking all of the knowledge out there and using whatever existing oil and gas resources that can be retrofitted for use in offshore wind.

We have a great workforce and these fleets all around the world. We want to make sure they’re all involved in this transition as we go from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Q: Tell us more about reusing available assets, moving them from oil and gas projects to offshore wind.

JO: When we look back to Block Island wind farm, it has now been over four years since we built the nation’s first offshore wind farm in Rhode Island. In the construction process,

we did look to our existing oil and gas assets and resources. Some of the labor was used to build the foundations because the knowledge and the labor needed for Block Island were very similar to oil and gas operations.

Vessels were another element that we could transition. Today, we’re still in a position where we don’t have necessarily all the right vessels that are needed in the supply chain, so we make use of what we have. Some vessels are retrofitted and some are using their capabilities. For instance, jack-up vessels were an integral part of the Block Island construction process and I see the jack-up vessels that are now used in the Gulf being used for offshore wind in the years to come.

Q: What projects are in the Ørsted Energy pipeline?

JO: It’s a pretty exciting pipeline if we look at the East Coast of the U.S. It depends on who you ask on what day: it could be it could be 25 gigawatts or 30 gigawatts here in the next 20 to 30 years. That’s a massive amount, especially when you compare it to what currently exists in the water, which is a mere 30 megawatts.

And it means a huge amount of investment and opportunity for mariners and the land-based supply chain.

In the near term, we have almost 3 gigawatts in our pipeline right now. We are in various stages of development on all the projects and right now we’re working our way through the federal permitting process.

Q: You spoke about opportunity for supply chain players. Can you please quantify that?

JO: These projects are complex, and as you can imagine, large-scale commercial wind farms involve quite a bit of the supply chain and have many moving pieces.

When you look at the major components that are involved in an offshore turbine you have the submarine cables that connect the towers, the turbines themselves to substations, and then

back to the power grid on land.

Then you have the foundations which could be monopiles similar to Block Island or gravity-based, etc.

Regardless of type, foundation pieces are large and have to be manufactured and moved, and then you have the tower pieces themselves, along with the nacelles that are getting bigger and bigger. And then there are the blades, which are probably the biggest pieces in terms of size – not weight – and are now reaching pretty fantastic sizes. Finally there are all of the smaller pieces.

Q: Do you think we’ll see offshore wind constructed in other waters?

Maybe the U.S. West Coast or the Gulf, or even the Great Lakes?

JO: Yes, I do. Right now the main focus is on the U.S. East Coast because of the “trifecta for development” with the right water depths (shallow water depths on the outer continental shelf), huge demand in the energy corridor from D.C. up to Boston, and the wind speed that is present off the East Coast. It’s the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind.

Development will look to the U.S. West Coast and possibly the Gulf, but the water is deeper. There are solutions that are commercially viable in the floating sector and fixed platforms are coming along. You do have that incredible energy demand on the West Coast and you have excellent wind speeds – you just have that added challenge with the water depth.

But that challenge can be absolutely be met.

The U.S. Gulf is overlooked right now, probably because it’s known for oil and gas activity, but there is tremendous opportunity there as well.

BBONE

John O’Keefe participated in the Breakbulk365 “Offshore Wind Projects in the US,” part of Breakbulk Americas: The Digital Special. Go to breakbulk.com/page/breakbulk365 to watch it. www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 75

INLAND TRANSPORTATION

TAKING THE DIGITAL HIGHWAY

BY FELICITY LANDON

Meeting Project Cargo Route and Tracking Needs

I

f you order a pizza on your smartphone, visibility is instant: you’ll be notified when the pizza is being made, put in the oven, ready to box up and on the way to your door.

“Why not give the same visibility to shippers and manufacturers?” asks Tony Stroncheck, co-founder and president of ProMiles Software Development Corp. in the U.S. “If I had a valuable piece of cargo being shipped, I would want to keep an eye on what is happening.”

A smart solution to provide that visibility, allowing shippers to manage and track all matters related to their road transporters, is one of a series of initiatives developed by ProMiles in partnership with the Pit Row Group, which is also a reseller of the products.

Both companies are members of the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association, or SC&RA. As Steven Todd, SC&RA vice president, transportation, said, digital and new technology solutions designed to streamline and improve road transport are about to explode in North America, and the ProMiles/Pit Row partnership is a big part of that.

The new tracking/managing process will enable the shipper/manufacturer to log in and follow progress from the start of the permitting process 76 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

through loading on the truck and all the way along the road journey, Stroncheck said. “It allows them to be more interactive, to view things and watch where their shipment is.”

In some ways, this is nothing new.

Companies hauling goods for the Department of Defense or the automotive sector in the U.S. have been required to have tracking devices on their trucks for two decades, so the shipper has the ability to know where the load is every hour. “But the oversize/overweight sector doesn’t have that,” Stroncheck said.

REAL-TIME TRUCK INFORMATION

ProMiles has been working with multiple original equipment manufacturer shippers to develop this solution, and is now building and refining the APIs ready for launch soon.

The system will enable shippers to update their information on where a truck is every 15 minutes. And just as you would like to know if the pizza oven breaks down and there is going to be a delay to you receiving your supper, so the system is being developed to send fault code notifications to the shipper if there is a problem with the truck engine, so that they can be involved in any decisions, or just kept

informed of them. “If you can give the shipper that visibility, you can eliminate tons of phone calls,” Stroncheck said.

The first project ProMiles and Pit Row Group tackled together was Permit Manager, which offers digital mapping and multi-state one-stop-shop permitting. “We are finishing up development on this – it is one of a kind,” said Michael Morgan, CEO of the Pit Row Group. “It covers both routes and regulation across multiple states, with all of their different processes and permitting rules.”

Stroncheck explained: “We knew in the early 1990s how difficult it is to establish what routes you can take with a regular size truck, let alone oversize/ overweight.” ProMiles first started working with the state of Texas, developing a permitting system to replace the old ways, he said. “You had to call agents at the DoT, tell them the dimensions, where you would pick up and where you were going to, and ask what route you could take. The agent would take up a big paper map and work out which routes you could travel. It could sometimes take days or weeks to decide the most accurate route.”

ProMiles requested all the data on bridges and routes, and access to bridge analysis software. “Why should ISSUE 6 / 2020

“Why should we have people looking at paper maps and making mistakes? The first thing is to analyze every bridge on the route to see if a bridge can cope with the load involved. In the past they might have routed trucks hundreds of miles out of the way when it could be done with just a half-mile detour. It is the same with avoiding obstacles.”

– Tony Stroncheck, ProMiles Software

we have people looking at paper maps and making mistakes? The first thing is to analyze every bridge on the route to see if a bridge can cope with the load involved. If not, sometimes a reroute can be done by cutting off the highway to bypass the bridge, perhaps using a ramp. In the past they might have routed trucks hundreds of miles out of the way when it could be done with just a half-mile detour. It is the same with avoiding obstacles.”

ProMiles developed permitting system software that can be configured to meet the specific needs of different jurisdictions. It worked with Pit Row Group to develop Permit Manager, the software through which transport operators can submit a permit application just once for all the jurisdictions using ProMiles software.

A key is having real-time information: if a bridge has collapsed or a piece of road is under construction, ProMiles’ system knows of any changes instantly and maps are automatically updated; it will reroute and reissue the permit even when the truck is already in transit.

Texas was issuing about 540,000 permits a year when the project began: “We are now doing 900,000 permits a year for Texas,” Stroncheck said.

“More people are able to order permits

in a timely manner, where before the process might have taken so long as to be too late for their timetable. In the past, people used to haul illegally because the system was so cumbersome.”

The Permit Manager system is now live in 13 jurisdictions, with two more due to be up and running by the end of the year.

SIMPLIFYING PERMITTING

Connecting the dots means that where, for example, a truck will be crossing five states, there is no need for a transport manager to go through five individual state permitting processes, only to find that the permitted routes don’t actually coordinate with each other, there are mismatches between time restrictions or connections at borders, and they have to go back and start again. “You can have a different permit for each county or even city in a state,” Stroncheck said.

“Putting it all together has been one of the biggest pains in oversize/overweight loads. Since we are managing all the routing, you can put in the origin and destination, and we will come back to you with one application which knows the routes that will be approved for each jurisdiction. It avoids duplication of information or the need to rekey your company name 100 times.”

ProMiles and Pit Row Group have also developed a Pilot Manager system which is due to start testing in two jurisdictions soon. “Pilot car licensing and insurance requirements all vary state by state,” Morgan said.

“Now we are able to bring the components together. Pilot Manager takes all the route and state requirements and checks which pilot cars have what is needed, and provides carriers with a list of people to choose from.”

Among other projects, ProMiles has developed audible oversize/overweight route permitting which provides satellite navigation combined with audible guidance which can warn the driver of requirements up ahead – perhaps a bridge with capacity for a maximum of three vehicles at once, or the need to deflate tires by 15 percent

in a couple of miles’ distance – and will also sound the alarm if the driver strays off-route. This will be released for the first time in Illinois.

Meanwhile, an E-Credentials system launched in 2019 has really come into its own. A driver can now carry all permissions, information about his journey and his own credentials electronically; whereas in the past an enforcement officer would have to leaf through many pages in a large permit book, now the driver can hold up his phone with a QR code.

“The officer can take a scan of the QR code and download everything – there is no paper to hand over, no need to wind down the window. E-Credentials has become a necessity during Covid-19,” Stroncheck said.

EUROPE-WIDE STANDARDIZATION

ESTA, the European association of abnormal road transport and mobile cranes, has been pushing for Europe-wide standardized permitting documents for years. Speaking to ESTA Director Ton Klijn, his frustration is only too clear.

“If you are applying for a permit, the document is different in every European country and in their own language. So for a truck going through four countries, you have to fill in four different forms in Ton Klijn four different lanESTA guages.”

He was pessimistic about the changes of standardized electronic permitting across the EU. “We want a standardized document translated into all the European languages. They can’t even achieve that!”

He describes digitalization in the sector in Europe as “in the Stone Age. Very little is digitalized and a lot of countries still rely on faxing and writing letters. To see some more www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 77

INLAND TRANSPORTATION

There is an urgent need for standardization of permitting for oversize loads.

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

governments implementing electronic permitting systems would be a major step forward.”

The Netherlands and Sweden have digital permitting systems that work perfectly, he says: “But some countries are trying to reinvent the wheel, which annoys me. They might benefit from the experience of the Dutch or the Swedes, but they are too proud to pick up the phone and ask for help, so they make the same mistakes that everyone made in the beginning. There are some countries that have nothing digital – and some that don’t want to have anything.”

The French government introduced electronic permitting, but a good number of regions have rejected the idea, so it is not uniformly available.

“We know from America’s almost nationwide system that electronic permitting is a win-win,” Klijn said.

“We know if you make it easier to get a permit, more permits will be asked for, and income goes up because more permits are issued and fewer people are needed to run the system. Also, there is less illegal driving, fewer bridge hits and fewer accidents. If it is 78 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

a huge problem or too difficult to get a permit, some drivers just go ahead with the trip anyway.”

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION A recent report by Lux Research entitled The Digital Transformation of Transportation and Logistics is mainly focused on unitized/liner shipping and e-commerce operations.

However, report author Harshit Sharma said: “We have certainly looked in the project/heavy cargo direction and overall the solutions will look fundamentally the same.

Our report looked at three primary challenges: visibility, which is about being able to track goods in real time and track accountability in the supply chain; agility, which is about meeting delivery demands; and sustainability, which is about reducing emissions in your supply chain through electronic tracking and other means, and running logistics in a much more efficient manner.”

Sharma said that as the older generation retires, the younger generation will find it hard to work in a way that doesn’t involve smartphones and

digital technology. “The future labor force will find it difficult to be productive without digital tools.”

Start-ups will likely be driving many of the new tech innovations, such as route optimization tools, Sharma said, and he predicts a shift to more “asset-less” operations, where technical companies don’t own any vehicles or assets but buy into those services. Some big carriers could make that move, becoming service providers with no assets, he said.

Do those not taking on digital opportunities risk being left behind?

“Definitely there is a risk of getting swallowed up or eventually going bankrupt,” he says. “Those who go digital can offer much better pricing – it gives you the advantage. These things tend to move slowly but I think we could see a bigger push because of Covid-19. This could be a game changer in digital transformation.” BB Felicity Landon is an award-winning freelance journalist specializing in the ports, shipping, transport and logistics sectors.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

THOUGHT LEADER

License to Lift

Rollout of Standardized Qualification has Begun

L

et’s be honest. The warning signs have been obvious for a long time. Any analysis of lifting accidents involving mobile cranes clearly shows that operator error is the cause in the overwhelming majority of cases. In addition, crane manufacturers have long worried of the competency of operators to handle their increasingly sophisticated machines.

What is more, this unhappy state of affairs has become obvious on site. A senior project manager working on wind farms recently told ESTA: “We have to admit it. There are currently people operating a crane who should not be. As a client, often you do not have a clue who is sitting in the crane.”

These concerns were given added impetus by a new directive from the European Union that national rules must not be used to deny work to qualified professionals from other EU member states. The directive includes crane operators within its scope.

The problem is that, at present, each EU member state has its own rules on the competence and certification of crane operators.

They range from compulsory to optional – and even to no rules at all. There is no accepted European standard.

But under the new directive, all “qualified” crane operators holding a card recognized by their national association would have to be treated equally, no matter how well, or poorly, they have been trained.

Since ESTA’s creation more than 40 years ago, we have made safety a central plank of our work. The problem of crane operator standards – and the obvious implications for safety on site – was one we simply could not ignore. So our work to create a European Crane Operators Licence, or ECOL, was born.

There were sound business reasons behind our thinking as well. The new ECOL license is not only an attempt to improve standards and safety, but will also help reduce the impact of skills shortages by making it easier for good operators to work anywhere in Europe and beyond.

Frustratingly, ECOL’s progress across Europe has been slowed by the pandemic – but it is still gathering momentum. It has

achieved ISO 9001-2015 certification, and has been approved by the European Qualifications Framework. Training centers are up and running in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, operated by Liebherr, Mammoet and EUC Lillebælt respectively, with two more in Germany and one in Belgium in the pipeline.

Work is underway on the important process of setting up mutual recognition agreements with national authorities. Agreements have been signed with the Netherlands and British Columbia in Canada, and talks are ongoing with Denmark, Germany and Spain. These agreements mean that the different national authorities have aligned their standards with ECOL and the ECOL license and the national license will be interchangeable.

For ESTA, ECOL is a massive undertaking. But we have been greatly encouraged by the strong support we have received to date. We are certain that in the near future ECOL will become a standard and essential qualification.

Quite simply, at present far too many European crane operators do not have the necessary training, and those that do find it almost impossible to move from country to country due to differing and restrictive national regulations. This makes the case for ECOL indisputable. It will be proof that the crane operator in the cab is properly trained to do the job they have been employed for – and it will be coming soon to a site near you.

Watch this space. BB

BY TON KLIJN, ESTA

The European Crane Operators Licence “is a massive undertaking,” but ESTA has been encouraged by strong support, Klijn said.

CREDIT: ESTA

Ton Klijn has been director of ESTA – the European Association of Abnormal Road Transport and Mobile Cranes – since 2017, and active in the heavy-lifting and transport industry since 1977.

He was managing director of Dutch company Wagenborg Nedlift from 2003 to 2017, when he stepped down.

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 79

PROFILE

TAKING THE PROJECT PLUNGE

Erhardt’s Project Division Focuses on Digitalization

BY FELICITY LANDON

T

owards the end of last year, Spain’s Erhardt Group launched its rebranded subsidiary, Erhardt Projects, to manage complex industrial projects.

Igor Muñiz, who previously led Geodis’ industrial projects operations in Europe, joined Erhardt early in 2019 as general manager of the new venture, and started pulling together his new team.

Up to the point of Covid-19 hitting, he was clearly pleased with results so far. “For us to be competitive in the Spanish market has not been easy – but we knew that. I was not expecting such rapid growth. But we are really booming with orders,” he said.

Having been in the industry since 1998, he was persuaded to join Erhardt because the focus was to be tailored solutions to customers.

“At Erhardt we have stevedoring, 80 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

ship agency, freight forwarding, technology and now a project cargo division.

Erhardt is a very well-known and established company from 1882 and wanted to develop the business. For Igor Muñiz me, what really Erhardt Projects persuaded me to make this move was to be able to bring value to our customers in a different way. We want to be niche, we want to be very unique with a boutique approach, and we want to be experts in transport focusing on engineering, chartering and projects,” Muñiz said.

Erhardt Projects also wants to take a very selective approach with clients, he added. “The idea is to provide

competence, knowledge and expertise.

No matter how difficult or complex the parameters, we want to put our niche customers in the center.”

He emphasized the need for teams like his to be flexible and to be clear about their customers’ reality. “To understand the challenges of our customers’ constraints is vital. These days many big operators are like elephants – it’s difficult for them to make decisions quickly. But in this industry, you need to be very agile, because the requirements are bigger and volatile, and you have to adapt and improve in order to reach targets.”

In particular, he is driving forward with a digitalization strategy, confident that Erhardt Projects can differentiate itself due to its established technology and technical expertise. Putting in place a digital front-end provides customers with a convenient one-stop shop experience and improves internal operational visibility, he said.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

“Our group has been focused on technology for 30 years,” he explained.

“We have created a platform for Erhardt Projects in which we are sharing all of our projects digitally with suppliers and customers and we are seeking digital solutions in an open, innovative way.”

FOUR-PRONG DIGITAL PLAN

Muñiz is reluctant, of course, to give too much away. But he explained that Erhardt Projects is working on four digital approaches: procurement, operations, engineering and chartering.

It is working on a digital supply chain in parallel with its traditional, physical supply chain. He envisages a digital supply chain where all those involved – suppliers, stevedores, haulers, ports, customs and so on – understand each other and work together.

“Even though we are witnessing a huge transformation of the sector, with the logical uncertainties that anything new involves, it is no less certain that we are seeing huge opportunities and we are therefore decisively and eagerly pressing to opt to be one of the trusted partners that the new Industry 4.0 concept demands,” Muñiz told a Spanish business publication recently.

“Moving special loads requires a high level of specialization, transparency and greater protection of the transported goods. Erhardt Projects is therefore being integrated in the value chains of customers and suppliers by offering a service encompassing engineering, technology, process and regulatory consultancy, assurance and, of course, transport.”

Erhardt Projects has also set up its own engineering department, which designs and develops equipment specifically to transport oversize and overweight loads.

Overall, said Muñiz, the target is to be a global player. Based in Bilbao, Erhardt has its own offices in China, Portugal and France. “However, Erhardt Projects mainly works through business partners and a global network of agents.

Each project is different – it requires different experts and partners.”

Having a global network of in-house teams can be an advantage, but can also be a disadvantage, he pointed out. “You

can’t possibly have experts on every type of project in every place. And if you have a permanent team of 10 people working on a specific project, what do you do when that project finishes? Therefore, we work with partners which have the equipment we need and that talk our language.

“Often customers say to us that they want to collaborate with a particular partner – they do know the market and they do have their preferences, and we respect that. I firmly believe that having local agents, business partners and a range of expertise is the right way to make things work.”

Within 10 months of starting work at Erhardt, Muñiz’s new operation had 14 technical and operations staff on the team. “These days, we are in the top four in the Spanish market. We are active in North Africa, France, the Middle East and the U.S. We have strong partners we are doing business with and I am really excited.”

KEEPING PACE WITH CHANGE

Even before Covid-19, it was clear that the industry was changing very fast, with key global players withdrawing or contracting, underlining the importance of adaptation. Those that do not adjust through digitalization and innovation will disappear, Muñiz said. “Customers want you to adapt to their needs.”

Because of its smaller size, Erhardt prides itself on its focus, niche approach and ability to make fast decisions.

Erhardt believes that providers should design offerings that can be tailored to customers’ needs. Building long-term relationships and becoming leaders in innovation are essential for maintaining a competitive advantage, Muñiz said.

“And big companies want plans A, B and C. You have to have a contingency plan and you have to know how to mitigate and manage risk. There can be too many layers in decision-making – it needs to be simple. A contract with 43 different deviations of what might happen is extremely difficult to sign and manage. But the project industry is changing extremely fast – not just in the past three to four years but in the past year and last months. This is a new era that we have to go into.”

Companies are also demanding more engineering and more services across chartering and the legal aspects, he said. Standards are higher and time to market is critical.

With project cargo getting larger and more complicated by the day, engineering knowhow is paramount, Muñiz said. Those that are not able to provide that are “automatically out,” he said.

“You need to be best in class for everything, A to Z.” BB Felicity Landon is an award-winning freelance journalist specializing in the ports, shipping, transport and logistics sectors.

Erhardt believes that providers should design offerings that can be tailored to customers’ needs. CREDIT: ERHARDT

www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 81

MARKET SPOTLIGHT

CHANGE IN CHINA Competitive Advantage No Longer a Given

BY THOMAS TIMLEN

W

hile multinational corporations have been adding manufacturing capacity in China for more than 40 years, more rigorous project planning will be required to fully capture China’s competitive advantage moving forward. This is a key conclusion drawn

by Christos Lampris, Independent Project Analysis, or IPA, Asia Pacific research lead, in a report published in June.

Even before additional Covid-related

uncertainties arose in 2020, China’s cost competitiveness gap with the West was narrowing, making investments in manufacturing there less attractive while China’s regulatory environment became increasingly unpredictable, complicating existing and planned projects in the region.

Speaking to Breakbulk, Lampris said that at the time that report was being written, existing construction projects were resuming work and there was an increase in infrastructure expenditure by the Chinese government in an attempt to rejuvenate the economy.

“However, there was uncertainty about how our predominantly multinational clients from the extractive and processing industries would react to the Covid-19 landscape, especially when it comes to planned capital investments in China,” he said. This was not only because of the direct effects of the pandemic, such as supply chain disruptions, but also because of a reduction in spending due to the overall economic outlook, exposure to low oil prices for some firms and the trade war between the U.S. and China.

Top: Some China joint venture projects are continuing, including construction of the Amur Gas Chemical Complex, an integrated polyethylene and polypropylene production facility being jointly developed by Sinopec and Russian petrochemical company Sibur. CREDIT: GAZPROM

82 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

ISSUE 6 / 2020

“There were cases where companies were deterred from proceeding with plans due to the above, the most recent being Saudi Aramco’s suspension of a planned US$10 billion facility in northeastern China,” Lampris said.

“Chinese companies have also been affected and some have deferred projects or cut expenditures.”

In August, Aramco suspended its involvement in the refining and petrochemicals complex in China as part of spending cuts made to cope with low oil prices and the uncertain market outlook. Prior to the Aramco move it was reported that projects relating to the establishment of five LNG regasification terminals in China, as well as two terminal expansion projects slated to be operational in 2020, had been delayed to 2021 as a result of the impact of Covid-19 combined with financial strains faced by some private companies involved.

While there have been some setbacks within China, the country has pursued opportunities beyond its borders. Aside from the Belt and Road Initiative, there are others such as a recent project in Russia. China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec), the largest refiner in Asia, began construction of the Amur Gas Chemical Complex, an integrated polyethylene and polypropylene production facility on Aug. 27. The complex is being jointly developed by Sinopec and Russian petrochemical company Sibur, and will be the largest chemical cooperation project between China and Russia. Operations are expected to commence in 2025, with the majority of its products destined for the Chinese market.

NOT A ‘SHOWSTOPPER’

In August IPA was asked by western multinationals to conduct risk evaluations and cost and schedule benchmarking for several prospective large chemical investments, some of which are megaprojects.

“These investments are based on expected high demand for certain petrochemicals and specialty chemicals.

One client, in particular, noted that they see some remaining risk due to

Covid, but they do not consider it a potential showstopper. Capital projects take years to start production, and these sectors have determined that the long-term demand forecast postCovid-19 supports expansion.”

Lampris expects to see large projects in the short term which will require transport services provided by large vessels and equipment. “However,” he cautioned, “the future is more uncertain and will depend on the sector, as well as how quickly consumer sentiment and spending will improve.” He added that the notion of reducing reliance on China is not new.

Indeed, it was considered when China started becoming more expensive.

The pandemic has reinforced the idea through the concept of global manufacturing resilience.

IPA has also looked at the practices, risks and performance of projects undertaken by Chinese companies, specifically in relation to chemical refining and processing plants, and the perception held by Western owner companies and manufacturers that Chinese companies can build such facilities much faster and at a fraction of the cost. Seeking to benefit from these advantages, some Western companies have partnered with Chinese firms to tap into perceived benefits of their supply chain.

“However,” Lampris said, “the question on everyone’s mind is what is the quality delivered? Will the facility run as expected and how long can we run it before we’ll need to shut it down for maintenance? Undoubtedly construction quality has improved over the past decade, and Chinese contractors can mobilize resources to execute projects fast. However, according to project management theory, it is very difficult to have it all; a facility that is cheap, fast, works as expected and that was built without injuring anyone in the process.”

“Capital projects take years to start production, and these sectors have determined that the longterm demand forecast post-Covid-19 supports expansion.”

– Christos Lampris, IPA

FEET IN TWO CAMPS

Not long ago, talk of Asian Tigers and Dragons was common as Chinese companies shifted some manufacturing to neighboring countries with relatively lower labor and overhead costs. This applied more to consumer goods than to industrial products; however, that has changed. Lampris noted that some Chinese companies are moving abroad while retaining their plants in China as part of a global expansion plan.

“Prior to the pandemic, a trend among large global projects was the use of modularization using Chinese fabrication yards,” Lampris said.

“Chinese fabrication yards also market themselves as being able to support large global projects. Projects would consider a modular construction approach, instead of stick-build, with large process and pipe rack modules being fabricated in China. This approach requires detailed logistics planning including marine transport and heavy-lift service providers. Covid19 caused a significant disruption to capital projects procuring modules from China and elsewhere.” IPA’s monthly client survey of the impacts of Covid-19 revealed significant delays from China in the March-to-May timeframe, although those delays seem to have now eased.

While the rise of Chinese manufacturers could be seen as a source of pressure for multinational corporations, included in this group are joint venture partners. Well-established joint ventures such as the COOEC-Fluor Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. (COOECFluor) partnership, which established a major fabrication yard in Zhuhai, China, now serves both domestic and www.breakbulk.com BREAKBULK MAGAZINE 83

MARKET SPOTLIGHT

non-Chinese markets. The COOECFluor Zhuhai yard produced the entire module program for the Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Co. Al-Zour project in late-2019. This involved the delivery of 88 modules in 20 separate shipments with a combined weight of 65,000 tonnes. Closer to home, earlier in 2019 the same yard produced the wellhead platforms for the Dongfang Gas Fields Development Project in Zhuhai, part of a new offshore oil and gas production platform in the western South China Sea, 132 kilometers west of Dongfang City.

Joint ventures such as the COOEC-Fluor Zhuhai fabrication yard serve domestic and nonChinese markets. Shown here, the central platform for CNOOC’s Dongfang 13-2 Gas Fields Development Project is loaded onto a barge at the COOEC-Fluor fabrication yard, destined for the western South China Sea. CREDIT: FLUOR, BUSINESS WIRE

TURBINE HOPES

As spending cuts employed by some refining and petrochemical companies have slowed related developments in China and elsewhere, there are few signs of similar restraint in the renewables sector. For the Simec Atlantis tidal turbine project, the company’s Director of External Affairs Sean Parsons explained the significance of completing the works despite the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Simec Atlantis Energy, through its partnership with ITPEnergised, worked with China Shipbuilding Industry Corp., or CSIC, and China Three Gorges, or CTG, to develop CTG’s first SG500-kilowatt tidal stream turbine. The mammoth structure, with a rotor diameter of 18 meters, was installed between the islands of Putuoshan and Huludao in the Zhoushan archipelago in China mid-April. This achievement has helped to open China’s 8.2-gigawatt tidal stream renewable power potential.

Parsons said that CSIC’s facilities in Wuhan had to deal with being at the center of the outbreak of Covid-19 and managed the logistical challenges that this presented with extreme professionalism. While following all government advice concerning social distancing as well as the regulations concerning manufacturing facilities, CSIC triumphed and the turbine is now installed.

Government policy is a significant driver for renewables. China is working to cut its coal consumption, which is a huge challenge as fossil fuel accounts for about 60 percent of the 84 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

Simec Atlantis overcame the pandemic to complete the manufacture of its mammoth tidal stream turbine at facilities in Wuhan, the epicenter of Covid-19.

CREDIT: SIMEC ATLANTIS

country’s overall energy consumption. Its strict 2015 Paris climate change commitments have been met, reflecting domestic political desire to respond to environmental concerns and address urban pollution. As such, the country is actively seeking out renewable investment opportunities, with studies estimating that tidal stream energy in China could supply more than 8.2 gigawatts to the country’s grid.

Parsons said that the natural resource and commercial opportunity China represents for the tidal stream power industry cannot be overstated, and that this opening up of a vast international market will have profound implications for supply chain and cost reduction developments,

which will be felt across the entire renewables and wider energy sector.

China still holds potential for continued joint venture works, leaning on the expertise of foreign multinational countries. No doubt, as Lampris explained, challenges remain, which can vary significantly between sectors. However, there are promising examples showing that with careful planning and coordination, these challenges can be overcome. BB Thomas Timlen is a Singapore-based analyst, researcher, writer and spokesperson with 30 years of experience addressing the regulatory and operational issues that impact all sectors of the maritime industry.

ISSUE 6 / 2020

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Air Freighters Ste p up to Pandemic

PROJECT CARGO CASE STUDIES

KE WI JO

Plate

REGIONAL REPORTS MARKET ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY

Modern M Cabotage

PORTS & TERMINALS ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE OCEAN CARRIERS ROAD/RAIL/BARGE/AIR TECHNOLOGY & EQUIPMENT

NAVIGATING FUEL

TUMULT

|

RECRUITMENT U-TU

RN

|

HOPES FOR ASIA

RECOVERY

BREAKBULK EVENTS

The Publication for Project Supply Chai the Industrial n Industry

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Issue 3 / 2020

ARAMCO MO

The Publication for Project Supply Chai the n In

GOO TO RI

Lump Sum Contra

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WHAT A DIFFER ENCE A YEAR MAK

BACK PAGE

AMERICAS ECONOMIC ACTIVITY 2018-2021 GDP FORECAST

Economists forecast a significant decrease in GDP across the Americas in 2020, while anticipating a strong turnaround in GDP growth in 2021.

2019

%

2020*

2021*

12 9 6 3 0 -3 -6

PE UN RU IT ED ST AT ES UR UG UA Y VE N EZ UE LA

M EX IC N O IC AR AG UA PA N AM A PA RA G UA Y

BR AZ IL CA N AD A

AR G EN TI N A BO LIV IA

CH ILE CO LO M BI CO A ST A D O RI M CA IN IC AN RE P. EC UA D EL O R SA LV AD O G R UA TE M AL HO A N D UR AS

-2.6 -26.8 -27.8

-9 -12

INFLATION FORECAST

Inflation rates throughout the Americas remain relatively under control, with the extreme exceptions of Argentina and Venezuela. %

1818 4556 10093

PE UN RU IT ED ST AT ES UR UG UA Y VE N EZ UE LA

M EX IC N O IC AR AG UA PA N AM A PA RA G UA Y

BR AZ IL CA N AD A

AR G EN TI N A BO LIV IA

-1

CH ILE CO LO M BI CO A ST A D O RI M CA IN IC AN RE P. EC UA D EL O R SA LV AD O G R UA TE M AL HO A N D UR AS

44.9 39.8 53.8

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

CURRENT ACCOUNT FORECAST

Current account balances are the difference between a given nation’s imported and exported goods, services and transfers and are an indicator of foreign trade trends. In US$bn.

10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40

M EX IC N O IC AR AG UA PA N AM A PA RA G UA Y

CH ILE CO LO M BI CO A ST A D O RI M CA IN IC AN RE P. EC UA D EL O R SA LV AD O G R UA TE M AL HO A N D UR AS

*Forecast

BR AZ IL CA N AD A

AR G EN TI N A BO LIV IA

-60

PE UN RU IT ED ST AT ES UR UG UA Y VE N EZ UE LA

-535.5 -460.7 -480.2

-50

Source: Consensus Economics, www.consensuseconomics.com 86 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com

ISSUE 6 / 2020

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UPCOMING EVENTS

9-10 February 2021 | Dubai

18-20 May 2021 | Bremen

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28-30 September 2021 | Houston