Canada’s new liner shipowner Doornekamp Lines has expanded quietly and rapidly from east to west coast with a fleet that has grown to three feeder container ships since last year.
Doornekamp announced its start-up in March 2021 with a single ship and a plan to connect mainline container drop-offs at Halifax in Nova Scotia with Great Lakes ports as far inland as Picton on Lake Ontario, in the group’s home territory.
That plan would require reflagging to Canada for protected cabotage trading.
But the recent handover of a Norwegian vessel for transpacific trading has complicated that picture.
Published statements by owner Ben Doornekamp indicate he is still pursuing the vision of a Canada-flag feeder container line, even if his plan to take containers off the roads and put them on the St Lawrence Seaway to Lake Ontario has taken a detour.
Doornekamp’s initial acquisition, the 869-teu Peyton Lynn C (built 2007), quickly went on long-term charter last year to Dutch general cargo giant Spliethoff and is now serving the Cleveland-Europe Express service alongside a Spliethoff multipurpose ship.
Since then, however, Doornekamp has made two more acquisitions, and with an evidently broader focus than just the east coast and the Great Lakes.
The sale of the Blystad group’s 1,118-teu Valencia Elizabeth D (ex-Songa Lynx, built 2006) was reported last December, just over a month after the Oslo-based private owner had bought it in a package of six from Vroon.
No price tag was reported on either sale of the quickly flipped ship, but VesselsValue puts the value at $19.55m. The buyer remained obscure until now, but Doornekamp officials confirmed that the ship is part of its fleet.
AIS data and local port agency reports indicate that the name change took place in the last week of July at Vancouver following underwater surveys.
The ship has been trading since April this year between Singapore and Vancouver.
“Songa [Lynx]/Valencia Elizabeth D will continue her route between China and Vancouver,” said Doornekamp spokesman Sandy Berg, adding that the company will soon have more information to make public.
Reference sources list another ship under the registered ownership of Doornekamp Shipping, the 925-teu Vivienne Sheri D (built 2009). It has been trading between Iceland and Portland, Maine, since it changed hands last September under charter to Iceland’s Eimskip.
Further information on plans for that ship in Doornekamp’s network was not immediately available.
Kingston-based family-owned parent company HR Doornekamp Construction, founded in 1977, got into the logistics business in 2015, after acquiring Picton Terminals on Lake Ontario.
The terminal acquisition was in part meant to serve Doornekamp’s own construction materials import requirements, but it has added bulk, general cargo, steel products and heavylift cargoes to the mix of cargoes, according to an interview with Ben Doornekamp by Canada’s Chamber of Marine Commerce in April.
The group has since then assembled a small Canada-flag tug and barge fleet, and beefed up the old Picton Terminals facility with container storage capacity ahead of its move into liner shipping.
