November 2003 - Eitzen group

Eitzen BulkEitzen Bulk A/S, Copenhagen was established as Tschudi& Eitzen Bulkers (DK) A/S early 1997 when Tschudi &Eitzen Bulkers AS, Oslo purchased EAC Shipping A/S,Copenhagen from The East Asiatic Company Ltd. A/S asa going concern. 80% of the shares are held by CamilloEitzen & Co. AS. Management and senior staff of thecompany hold the remainder 20%.Eitzen Bulk is conducting its business as both ship ownersand operators, and apart from the head office inCopenhagen Eitzen Bulk has representative offices in NewYork, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Hong Kong and as from1st October 2003 also in Melbourne.Eitzen Bulk's mission statement is:"We aim to be market leader in providing value-added andcost effective transportation services to our customers withfocus on high ethics and quality".The Chartering and Operations staff at Eitzen Bulk's headoffice and overseas offices place great emphasis on havingclose personal relationships with existing as well as potentialnew customers. Besides the usual marketing objectivesthis facilitates a fruitful dialogue about each customer'sspecial requirements and problems, which enables EitzenBulk to tailor its services to satisfy these requirements.Typically, on any one day, Eitzen Bulk operates a fleet ofabout 60 vessels mainly consisting of handymax vessels (35- 55,000 DWT), and in addition handy (25 - 35,000 DWT)and panmax (60 - 75,000 DWT) bulkers are employed. Thefleet has a total carrying capacity of about 2.5 mill. DWT.The first vessel in a series of 6 handymax newbuildingsordered at Oshima and Imabari shipyards in Japan wasdelivery on 21st January 2003 and named "SIBULK PRE-MIER". She has recently been sold to German owners andtaken back on long term period charter.The remaining 5 newbuildings will be delivered during2004 and 2005.Eitzen Bulk has a partnership with Sealift, Antwerp withinthe handysize segment. This operation is focusing on servicingcustomers with both parcels and full loads in thehandy size, mainly within the Atlantic basin.The backbone of Eitzen Bulk's activities is a portfolio ofcontracts of affreightment, which are being entered intowith a diversified range of large international companies aswell as a substantial amount of spot shipments - arbitrage- which are being carried for a series of very close customers.In 2002 the total volume of carryings amounted to 13.3mill. tons mainly consisting of coal, petcoke, agriculturalproducts, alumina, cement clinker, fertilizers, steel productsand pulpwood logs.For loading and discharging at ports with no or inadequatecargo handling facilities Eitzen Bulk operates pt. 56hydraulic Peiner grabs with a capacity of 10 cubic metres.The grabs are interchanged in sets of three or four betweenstrategically chosen locations world-wide.As also reflected in the Mission Statement earlier in thisarticle, the activities of Eitzen Bulk are very customer orientated.By putting focus on high quality and high ethicscombined with value-added and cost-effective transportation,Eitzen Bulk has a position as being one of the largestoperators within the Handymax dry cargo sector in theAtlantic basin, and amongst the largest operators on aworld-wide basis.Whereas volume in itself is not an objective, it is extremelyimportant for Eitzen Bulk to have a critical mass withinits segment thereby be an important player in the market,who the cargo owners shall always consider as their potentialpartner for their transportation needs.Eitzen Bulk's most important tool is its staff, and it is itsaim at any time to have the most professional and wellmotivatedorganisation to support its vision. In addition itis the obvious objective at any given time to equip alloffices with state of the art operations and IT systems.7