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Van Acker expects the returns on global towage operations to remain under pressure
in the coming years. “And so our vision for the joint ventures will remain focused on
cost leadership, increasing scale and improving efficiency,” he said. “We base our
strategy on comprehensive market analyses and use the practical experiences of our
joint ventures as a guideline for our approach. We expect it to become increasingly
difficult for smaller players to meet market demand and that we will see a shakeout.
This could result in further consolidation and improved returns in the longer term.”
EFFICIENT ORGANIZATION
KOTUG SMIT Towage has around 850 employees. Its 64 vessels provide harbor
towage services in eleven ports across four countries: the Netherlands (Rotterdam,
Terneuzen and Vlissingen), Belgium (Antwerp, Zeebrugge and Ghent), the UK
(Liverpool and London) and Germany (Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven).
The company is headquartered in Rotterdam and has operational offices in Liverpool,
London, Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Terneuzen and Antwerp.
“Many of our large clients are active in several of ‘our’ ports and they expect the same
operational approach everywhere, under comparable commercial conditions and with
a uniform level of safety and reliability,” said CEO René Raaijmakers. “SMIT and
KOTUG are traditionally family-run type of businesses with an impressive history.
Our task is to integrate these two organizations in such a way that we retain the pride
and passion of our crews and combine the best elements of both partners, and use
that as a basis for establishing an efficient organization. We are carrying out a
detailed analysis of all the business processes and are working to develop our internal
IT landscape and communication processes to support the planning of vessels and
crews, service payrolling, financial administration, CRM, and to provide technical
support for the entire fleet. In close consultation with our employees, we are in the
process of selecting various new applications, which we will start implementing
mid-2017. We aim to complete the entire integration process by the end of the year.”
INTERCHANGEABILITY
“For our clients, concepts such as reliability, safety, efficiency and speed are key,”
continued Raaijmakers. “In addition, the market sets requirements for our equipment,
not just in terms of engine power but also in terms of fuel consumption and carbon
emissions. In the period ahead, the emphasis at KOTUG SMIT Towage will be on
providing the right mix in terms of vessel capacity and flexible deployment of our
people and vessels, without losing sight of the necessary knowledge of local conditions.
By separating our daily operations management from our asset management, we are
able to deploy our vessels to all ports if and when they are needed, even when clients
make sudden changes to their shipping schedule or ports of call. The operational
organization will be geared to adapt to this required flexibility. For example, at
present we are working in England with a German crew on a Dutch tugboat. This
interchangeability is crucial to providing client-oriented and flexible services.”
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