New CEO aims to get Rickmers Maritime ship-shape

Singapore

NEXT to the mega vessels plying the oceans these days, container ship owner Rickmers Maritime's ships look positively teeny. But the shipping trust's new chief executive officer, Soeren Andersen, who took the helm at the start of June this year, doesn't mind that at all.

In fact, the global trend towards building increasingly larger container ships will benefit Rickmers Maritime's smaller vessels, says Mr Andersen, 44, who has spent about two decades in the shipping industry in major firms such as Danish conglomerate Maersk and APL, owned by Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines.

That line of reasoning might sound counterintuitive at first, since bigger container ships are generally seen as having more economies of scale and, therefore, better able to compete against oth…