Multipurpose shipping operator AAL announced it is expanding its European team, agency network and service capabilities.
Its Hamburg team is bolstered with the appointment of Eike Muentz to General Manager Europe and Jan-Henrik Heyken to Senior Chartering Manager Europe.
Simultaneously, it is expanding its European agency network, with Maritima Davila (Grupo Davila) in Spain, Breakbulk Project Agencies in France (a division of Shipping Agency Service Le Havre) and De Keyser Thornton in Belgium (to cover Benelux). This activity comes hot on the back of its ongoing fleet expansion to service new semi-liner trades around the world and a new scheduled liner service between Asia and the Middle East.
Kyriacos Panayides, Managing Director of AAL commented, ‘AAL is currently serving long-term projects around the world for the renewable energy, mining, infrastructure, and offshore oil and gas sectors – to name but a few. The geographic size of our network and fleet capabilities today, is only matched by our commitment to perform on every booking and ambition to grow even further. Europe is still the powerhouse and architect behind much of the project cargo movement worldwide and with the strengthening of our Hamburg team and agency network around Europe, we are sending a clear message of intent to the market.’
Eike Muentz, newly appointed General Manager of AAL Europe, added, ‘Our strong and well respected team here in Hamburg has doubled in size since the start of the year and we have repaid the faith of our senior management by already winning a number of exciting COAs that are employing several of our ‘mega-sized’ (30,000+ dwt) MPV ships full time with project cargo movements worldwide. Crucially, we are performing on these bookings, providing the capacity, services and commitment of resources needed and the time and cost efficiencies demanded. The MPV sector is small and in recovery, so as we build upon our reputation for trust and delivery, the word quickly spreads.’
He concluded, ‘Jan-Henrik Heyken comes to AAL with 12 years shipping experience and an excellent reputation in the sector. We are also delighted to welcome leading maritime brands as our new exclusive country Agents in important EU markets: Maritima Davila in Spain; Breakbulk Project Agencies in France and De Keyser Thornton (Benelux). The Latter are both part of the French logistics group, NAXCO - a large and fully integrated shipping and logistics provider, founded in 1967.’
‘These new partners are hugely experienced and well-respected in their respective markets and join OceanWise in Italy as integral parts of our growing European Network – boosting our commercial reach and ability to compete across the whole region.