No one was surprised that the talk at the John T Essberger centenary celebration focused on who would lead the shipping company going forward.
The patriarchs, Eberhart and Heinrich, are 76 and 80 years old, respectively.
The managing partners have been helming the group, founded by their grandfather and company namesake, for more than 40 years.
They hope that someone in the family will take over, said managing partner Eberhart von Rantzau.
But who and in what role remains to be seen.
“They must want it, and they must be able to do it,” he told TradeWinds at the christening of two tankers on 21 June. Among other things, any succession will demand the family sticks together, he believes.
Only a very big shipping company like that owned by Sammy Ofer in London — for whom Eberhart worked in the 1970s — can be broken up, he added.
“Together you are strong, if you split up you are not,” he explained.
Burden of responsibility
That puts the responsibility squarely on the fourth generation of the family.
Among them are Eberhart’s son Philipp, 26, and his daughter, Caroline, 24.
Philipp is doing a series of internships around the world and plans to join the company next year to benefit from his father’s experience.
“You can learn a lot — you should take opportunities to learn from the older generation,” he said.
Other family members with an interest include Heinrich’s son, Georg von Rantzau, who runs his own German shipping firm, OKEE Maritime.
He believes the family leadership structure will be clarified among the next generation. “We have been actively working in a structure for many years,” said Georg.
“Any family member has to prove that they are qualified to run a modern shipping company if they want to gain the trust they need from all shareholders and colleagues to represent the family’s interests.
“Our family has been fortunate enough that there might be one or even two in our generation who are willing and able to fulfil such requirements,” he noted.
However the challenging market environment, never-ending rules and regulations and the importance of environmental responsibility require a deep understanding of the industry and modern leadership approaches, Georg noted.
Interim
In what appears to be the interim, the Deutsche Afrika-Linien/John T Essberger Group has taken on a new chief executive.
The company has poached Sven Schwarz from rival Gefo Shipping to replace Michael Triskatis, who has returned to the US.
The company is seen as a market leader in stainless steel chemical tankers in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean.
That position is bolstered by a partnership with Stolt-Nielsen.
“Originally Niels Stolt-Nielsen wanted to sell the fleet to us, but that was not the right path,” Eberhart said.
He added that it was preferable to form a pool, which ultimately led to the creation of the E&S Tankers pool comprising around 40 ships.
Some 14 are ships contributed from Stolt, with chartering and operations handled from Hamburg. That is a “win-win” at a time when the company is focused on the chemical tanker trades.
The liner service of Deutsche Afrika-Linien — but not the whole shipping company — was sold to Hapag-Lloyd in 2022.
That was the right commercial decision because the company would have been too small to compete with large liner operators.
Going forward, the priority is to adapt to challenges and focus on growth in the core business of chemical tankers.
That took a hit as the war in Ukraine led to the loss of some Russian business.
So the company is looking at other avenues such as growing its operations in the Caribbean market. Strategically, the company has an eye to reinvest in newbuildings and grow its shipping pools.
If it does so, it will retain a majority stake to maintain control, as it does with financial investments.
That desire to maintain control raises the question of whether the elder generation will ever be hands-off when the younger one takes charge.
“We’ll see,” said Eberhart. “Maersk Mc-Kinney [Moller] went back to the company when he was 95.”
