Erwin Strahlmann, 57 not out!
Coastal Shipping
On this occasion, we begin to look at the fleet of an operator of standard coasters rather than the ship design so our article is a hybrid of "Standard Coasters" and "Fleet Focus"!
In 1989 Erwin Strahlmann became a ship owner. He purchased a part share in the coaster Borsteler Berg [ATG, 1984gt/89] one of a large class of low air draught vessels then in production at the Damen yard in Gorinchem. In July 2004, Strahlmann owns a fleet of over 50 short sea traders and expansion continues at a pace. In the past few weeks he has purchased four more vessels from Vertom of Holland and there is no sign of an end to the expansion of his company.
Such a rapid rise is remarkable at any time, but to achieve it at a time when the German coastal shipping business is in overall decline and many owners are moving up to larger vessels or leaving the industry altogether is even more remarkable. Herr Strahlmann clearly believes that there is a future in the short sea trades and he has obviously been able to persuade his bankers of the logic of his views. He is clearly not going to allow the Dutch to dominate the European coastal business.
His success is down to a number of factors but the man undoubtedly has an eye for a bargain. Borsteler Berg herself had been launched at Sliedrecht in 1986 but it was not until 1989 that Damen found a buyer and completed the vessel. I suspect that Damen were keen to make the deal and that Herr Strahlmann obtained the first of many bargains. Borsteler Berg must have impressed the new owner as his fleet now includes nine sister ships of the Damen Combi Coaster 125 type including his first vessel which now sails as Bounder. Over the past few years, overtonnaging has made it very difficult to obtain profitable rates for dry cargo coasters trading in Northern European waters and as a result many German owners have put modern well-maintained vessels up for sale. Erwin Strahlmann has taken full advantage of the buyer's market and his fleet has grown at an ever-increasing rate.
Almost all his secondhand purchases have been from German owners but in 2003, he broke with tradition and ordered new vessels from the SLK yard at Komarno. The first few were not quite new and, as in the case of Borsteler Berg, their hulls had been started a few years earlier. The Slovenske yard then faced severe financial problems and all production had ceased before the ships could be completed. In 2001 the yard recommenced production and Erwin Strahlmann ordered his first new vessels to the successful 'Rhein' class design. His order has now grown to 12 vessels to be delivered by 2006 and six are already in service. Erwin Strahlmann told the Slovak Spectator that he was very satisfied with the ships and that 'at the moment this is the best quality vessel of this type you can get for such a price on the European market'.
Having bought the vessels as cheaply as possible, Reederei Erwin Strahlmann then has to run them at a profit. To do this the company needs to keep operating costs as low as possible and for some years now almost all the vessels have been crewed by Polish officers. The majority of ratings are also Polish but fifteen ships carry Filipino ratings. Polish crews are provided by a Polish company, Stemag Marine, and many other aspects of the company's business are run from Poland. The technical department is In Szczecin and most repair work is handled by the Gryfia yard in that city. The company itself is based in Marne, a small town in Schleswig Holstein, a few miles north of Brunsbüttel with the stores department located in Brunsbüttel on the Kiel Canal itself. As the vast majority of Strahlmann's ships trade between the Baltic and Northern Europe with occasional forays into the Mediterranean, the ships regularly pass Brunsbüttel on their way through the Nord-Ostsee Canal, to give the Kiel Canal its correct German identity. In 2003, Strahlmann vessels made over 500 transits of the waterway.
Registry is another area where savings can be made and Strahlmann has placed almost all his vessels under the Antiguan registry, a popular flag for German owners. He has remained with the home classification society and all ships are classed by Germanischer Lloyd.
Another specialist area is cargo fixing and chartering management. Two specialist agencies deal with this aspect of the business for the vast majority of the fleet. Thirty three of the larger vessels are handled by Meerpahl & Meyer GmbH of Hamburg and fifteen of the smaller ships are dealt with by Danish managers Echoship ApS of Svendborg. In both cases the Strahlmann vessels make up the majority of the ships managed but other vessels are managed for other owners. Echoship tends to concentrate on the Baltic trades with more emphasis on timber cargoes whereas Meerpahl & Meyer have a wider trading range which includes the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
There has to be an odd one out and in this fleet that vessel is the Jamtland [GIB 4071gt/92]. A larger vessel than the rest of the fleet, she was purchased from Dutch owners when operating on a container service between Lithuania and Rotterdam. As a Dutch vessel she had to have a Dutch master and two Dutch masters were initially retained for her. She has since transferred to the Gibraltar flag, maintaining her novelty value as the odd one out.
The operation of the Strahlmann fleet once again highlights the international nature of seaborne trade. Germany, Antigua, Poland, Denmark, Gibraltar and the Philippines are all directly Involved in the operation of the fleet. Communication can clearly become a problem in a company with such a variety of nations and languages involved and all seagoing staff have to be proficient in English, the working language for the company.
Herr Strahlmann has quickly built up a fleet consisting of examples of many of the successful standard coaster types built in the last twenty-five years. Many of these classes have already featured in this magazine's series of articles about standard coasters. In the next issue we will detail the full fleet but the photographs accompanying this article give an idea of the ships owned by Reederei Erwin Strahlmann of Marne.
Richard Potter
