A 176 year-old-operation, Rickmers-Linie is a member of the Hamburg-based Rickmers Group and provides a worldwide network of liner services for the transportation of breakbulk, heavylift and project cargoes such as transformers, generators, railway locomotives – and of course, wind turbines. PES once again caught up with the company’s Director of Marketing and Sales, Gerhard Janssen.
PES: Welcome back to PES magazine. For the benefit of readers who might not be familiar with your company, can you explain a little about your operation and how you serve the wind industry?
Gerhard Janssen: Rickmers-Linie is a leading liner carrier specialised for the transportation of breakbulk, heavylift and project cargoes. We operate a Round-The-World Pearl String Service, which connects the industrial centres of the world on an eastbound rotation with fortnightly departures.
Furthermore, we have a service from Europe to the Middle East and India, as well as the services in the Pacific, which are the westbound service from the US East Coast via the Panama Canal to Northern China, South Korea and Japan, as well as our brand new NCS Service linking Japan, South Korea and China with ports on the Northern Coast of South America, in the Caribbean and finally Philadelphia.
PES: What’s the temperature of the wind transportation market at the moment? When we last spoke, things were looking promising…
GH: Things are still promising. Driven by policy makers worldwide, green energy such as wind power, will continue to be a hot industry.
PES: European stimulus packages have driven many wind projects this year, have the benefits filtered down to yourselves?
GH: We see a lot of business potential in various trades that will be looking for suitable and sufficient capacity, thus benefiting the MPP (Multipurpose) segment, and equally ourselves.
PES: What are the challenges that you are facing to meet increased demands in order to effectively serve your customers?
GH: We are watching this market very carefully, as it appears to be in some regions a trend to consider wind energy components like a commodity. If this truly is a trend, carriers with low added-value capability will probably benefit more compared to heavy-lift/project carriers such as Rickmers-Linie
