‘Stena Bulk, Transporting Oil First Class’ , Focus Reports
Release Date: 2010-09-28
In the tanker business price is everything and trying to remain cost-competitive whilst ensuring high safety standards and reducing the environmental impact is a tall order. However, Swedish company, Stena Bulk is aiming to meet that challenge.Stena Bulk seeks to position itself in the tanker shipping industry as a leader in innovation and the company is clearly not content with standard ships. Like the other ship owners Stena Bulk tries to charter their ships as profitably as possible and like other owners they operate many standard tankers. However, where Stena Bulk differ from their competitors is their enthusiasm for raising standards in ship design and constructing high-quality vessels.
This is a tough sell in the shipping industry where, provided tankers fulfil the minimum construction requirements, there is open price-bidding between owners and building ships above specification is simply unprofitable. Erik Lewenhaupt, General Manager of Stena Bulk in Singapore told Focus Reports: ‘If you build a ship which is more costly somehow you need to be able to get that investment back’. The trick which Stena Bulk and their technical wing, Stena Teknik are trying to pull off is to find ways of making more expensive tankers cost-effective.
The company is therefore establishing its name by making tailor-made tankers to meet the individual specifications required by their clients: be that entering a specific port or transporting combinations of cargo and they have done this so far with fourteen ships. In this way, the company is finding areas of trade where their technical knowledge can actually make a difference and provide a service to their clients that no one else can.
The company has a strong track record in innovation. Stena Teknik came up with the MAX concept ship which carries 30% more tonnage than traditional tankers. Their innovation led to the Suez-MAX which was able to overcome draft restrictions in the ports of Philadelphia by building extremely wide ships – 70 m beam – with shallow hulls enabling them to go straight into port without unloading onto smaller vessels first. In the Baltic Sea their B-MAX ships are double-hulled and built to ice-breaker standards to maximise safety.
Looking to the future, Stena Bulk is proud of their prototype AirMAX tankers. The concept is to build a ship where a hollow is carved out of the bottom of the hull and a compressor sends air into this space to lift the tanker up to float on a pocket of air, thereby reducing drag. Testing on this revolutionary design began in June this year with results ready by November. Through economies of scale, higher safety standards and environmentally cleaner tankers Stena Bulk leading the way in ship design.
What allows for this freedom to innovate is that they have full backing from the Stena Sphere group. In fact, Stena Bulk did not make a profit over the difficult year of 2009, but it was kept afloat by the group who continue to encourage them to develop their business and market the type of shipping concept which creates gains for their clients in the long run and emphasises good design over cutting-costs. Erik Lewenhaupt summed up his company’s philosophy by saying ‘we’re not just in the business of transporting oil; we’re in the business of transporting it first class’.
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | Focus Reports |
| Country: | 瑞士 |