Few among the 30 shipping players who can help shape the next 30 years will have as much impact as Andreas Sohmen-Pao.

The Oxford- and Harvard-educated chairman of BW Group has become the public face of Singapore shipping, assuming the mantle from Siong Seng Teo of Pacific International Lines.

The son of World-Wide’s Helmut Sohmen and grandson of Hong Kong grandee Yue-Kong Pao carries the responsibility and capital for what was once the world’s biggest shipowner.

Thirty@30 Years: about this series

This story is one of 30 profiles in a special edition of our TW+ magazine.

To celebrate TradeWinds’ 30th birthday, TW+ is not looking back, but forward, with a Thirty@30 focus on the important people and issues extending out to 2050.

TradeWinds reporters have profiled 30 personalities who have shown traits that we think mean they will influence the directions the shipping industry takes, maybe not quite as far forward as the next 30 years, but certainly over the next decade.

Read all the profiles when TW+ is published on 16 October.

Now, after nearly two decades of acquisitions around the world and the quiet shift of its corporate base from Hong Kong to Singapore — which looks politically shrewd in retrospect — the stage is set for Sohmen-Pao to emerge as a global leader.

He chairs the Singapore Maritime Foundation, a private-sector-led organisation that aims to develop the country as an international maritime centre. In addition to promoting the diverse clusters of the local maritime industry, its other main goal is to ensure a steady pipeline of future-ready talent by attracting young people to shipping.

Sohmen-Pao also chairs the foundation’s international advisory panel on maritime decarbonisation, which brings together a number of industry heavyweights tasked with developing a strategy for the island nation as part of its contribution towards the International Maritime Organization’s goal to halve annual greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by 2050.

His role on the panel fits well with his beliefs, which advocate a sector-wide carbon levy for shipping that puts a price on the environmental cost of fossil fuels.

At the Global Maritime Forum in Singapore last year, he told industry leaders: “Let’s not be on the wrong side of history on this one. [The] IMO has set the trajectory, politicians are demanding it, this train is leaving the station.”

Large-scale energy storage

In addition, the BW Group is looking to back other forms of clean technology, such as batteries. It has invested in Corvus Energy, described as the market leader of large-scale energy storage systems for ships.

Corvus Energy has been a pioneer in this market for almost a decade and has a leadership position with more than 140 installations and two million operating hours.

BW LPG has also begun retrofitting 12 of its VLGCs with LPG-propelled dual-fuel engines, which will reduce SOx emissions by up to 97%.

TradeWinds reported in August that the 84,134-cbm BW Gemini (built 2015) had arrived at China’s Yiu Lian Dockyards, where it is set to become the first large LPG carrier retrofitted with a dual-fuel propulsion system that will allow it to run on LPG.

Consolidation is another area in which Sohmen-Pao will continue to be a significant industry player. The group was formed when World-Wide shocked Norway with the purchase of tanker giant Bergesen in 2003. The BW fleet now exceeds 350 vessels and comprises the world’s largest gas shipping fleet, with more than 120 LNG and LPG carriers.

The past few years have seen Sohmen-Pao initiate consolidation in the VLCC, product tanker and LPG sectors via various BW Group-controlled interests.

In some cases, it has brought him up against shipping’s ultimate deal maker, John Fredriksen. He thwarted the Norwegian tycoon’s attempt to take control of DHT Holdings, in a deal that saw BW Group sell its VLCC fleet in return for a one-third stake in the US-listed company.

Although buoyed by his successful bids for Hafnia and Epic Gas, Sohmen-Pao tasted defeat in his attempt to combine the fleets of BW LPG and Dorian LPG, which would have created a 70-strong fleet of VLGCs.

But Hafnia’s $270m opportunistic offer for product tanker owner Ardmore Shipping shows that his hunger for consolidation remains healthy. There is surely more to come from Sohmen-Pao.