NEWS 55 - Grimaldi Group

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Editorial
Contents
3 Top 20 business reputation
4 New MoS route
Barcelona linked to Tangier
The Civitavecchia-Catania-
Malta service resumes
6 Finnlines takes delivery of
“Finnbreeze” and “Finnsea”
Hull and Immingham
connected to the Euromed
8 “Grande Costa d’Avorio” further
enhances the MEX service
Ceremony on board “Grande Togo”
9 Ferry Shipping Conference 2011
10 Acl recertified
SAL gets ISO 9001 certification
11 New offices in Antwerp
Piazza di Siena horse show
12 Grimaldi Lines and Redtortuga
Transport Logistics Fair of Munich
13 News
14 Agent List
15 Schedules
- Mediterranean Short Sea Network
- Finnlines (Baltic & North Sea)
- Atlantic Network
- ACL
- Euro Med Network
G r imaldi
NE WS
Direttore Responsabile / Editor in Chief
Luciano Bosso
Progetto grafico /Graphic design
Marco Di Lorenzo
Pubblicazione trimestrale
Quarterly publication
Reg. Trib. Napoli n. 5150 del 26/9/2000
Stampa / Print: ROSSI srl - Nola (Napoli)
Circulation 35,000 copies
Printed on 18 July 2011
GRIMALDI GROUP
Via Marchese Campodisola, 13
2 GNE WS80133 NAPOLI (Italy)
Grimaldi News can be seen on
line on www.grimaldi.napoli.it
Principles
at the heart of a
successful business
In a business like ours, reputation is everything. A good name is a testament to honesty
and integrity over time, and to a relationship with existing customers that is a guarantee
of quality and probity for customers to come. By the same token, a poor reputation,
justified or not, can scare away potential clients, and can be devilishly hard to shake off.
I am proud to say that we at Grimaldi have always been proud of the way we conduct our
business. Of course we might be considered somewhat partial on the subject, so it is gratifying
to find that our view is shared by respected and impeccably independent observers.
Last April, the Reputation Institute in partnership with the Italian market research institute
Doxa released a report on corporate reputations in Italy. Entitled Reputation Pulse 2011,
it asked some 3,000 interviewees to grade the top 100 Italian companies according to
such emotional factors as trust, admiration and positive or negative perceptions, and more
“rational” indicators such as innovation, work environment, ethics, leadership and corporate
social responsibility.
We are pleased to say that Grimaldi scored 74.4 points out of 100, placing us 13th out
of those leading companies in the reputation rankings. This achievement is all the more
remarkable given that we do not have the visibility of a business that is publicly listed or
that deals primarily with consumers. Perhaps even more gratifying, we were judged the
fifth most ethical company of the 100 considered in the poll.
A good reputation is built in many ways, as this study makes clear. It is about treating your
employees as well as your clients. It is about taking responsibility for the environment in
which you work, and in our case that means the sea and the air. And it is about behaving
with responsibility in the market in which you operate.
This last is all the more difficult when competition is tough, and given the scale and depth
of the continuing economic crisis, there can rarely have been a tougher market than the
one we are dealing with today. Everyone is under pressure, from the companies we are
competing with on the Motorways of the Sea to the banks that finance them.
In such conditions, it might be understandable that some shipping companies continue to
run old ships at often uncompetitive rates in order to maintain cash flow. It might also be
comprehensible that banks defer tough decisions – to withdraw support, for instance, from
companies that are not viable over the long term – in the hope that with time the wider
pressure on their balance sheets will ease and they will be able to deal with problems in
a measured way.
For the market as a whole, however, such an approach becomes a cross that everyone
must bear. These are, I should reiterate, abnormal times in which we are all having to
respond quickly and under the pressure of changing circumstances. But the market will
only recover its equilibrium once reason returns, and that means obsolete tonnage drifting
out of the market, and banks withdrawing their support from perennially loss-making
companies as they move to clean up their balance sheets.
Once that happens, Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction, in which those companies
that innovate and invest survive and prosper and those that do not go to the wall, will come
into play once again to the benefit of all. In the meantime, we intend to continue on a path
that has not only yielded strong financial results but an iron-clad reputation for integrity.