The beginning wasn\u2019t that auspicious, writes Stevie Knight. It started with a painful moment that Orsel now calls the \u201cbig bang\u201d. She\u2019d been working in the accounts department of a ship management company. \u201cWhen the owner turned it over to his sons… everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a good moment to find herself out of work. Having just taken on a mortgage she was faced with two options. The first was accepting the knock, taking a small part-time job and losing her home. The other was, she admits, \u201ca gamble maybe not everyone would have gone for\u201d. At the tender age of 23 she got a loan from the bank and, with a couple of others, started up a ship management company of her own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told myself that I could give it up if it didn\u2019t work out. But within a few years I realised there was no way I could go back to being an employee.\u201d
MF Shipping was launched in 1994 with just one client and a fleet of six \u2013 but this rose in scale, size and reach. While the original vessels were less than 3,000dwt she now has over 50 bulk and liquid carriers of up to 16,500dwt under her wing. There\u2019s a staff of 50 in the office and Orsel has become a ship owner too.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, there have been setbacks. In one case she witnessed extremely unethical behaviour from a client. \u201cIf you see something like that you just know that, at some point, it will be your turn,\u201d she says. The pain of saying goodbye to a whole fleet forced adjustments within her own company. But, she says: \u201cIn the longer run you just have to take those kinds of decisions \u2013 although they\u2019re not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that, business didn\u2019t take too long to recover, something she puts down to not cutting the staff down to the bone. \u201cMaybe there are some companies that have to do this as a matter of survival \u2013 but in the long run you can\u2019t just shake the tree and expect qualified people to fall out. It\u2019s a long-term investment that you make in your colleagues, both onshore as well as in the vessels.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, although she admits the company had \u201cwhat you might call an overcapacity\u201d for a while, \u201cbecause of this we were able to jump into new markets, spread our wings into different cargo types and that attracted new clients as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite all this she says growth is a balance. The company now has a 22-year history and since the downturn she\u2019s seen a number of vessels in financial distress looking for a good home. \u201cButyYou have to make the right choices,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can\u2019t say yes to everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example in the case of oil tankers with questionable maintenance, there\u2019s the potential for issues to spread out \u201cand impact current clients and even the company\u2019s performance toward the oil majors\u2026 Sometimes you just have to say \u2018sorry, no\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
Although she says shipping is going through a rough time and adds \u201cwe haven\u2019t seen the end of it yet\u201d, her company is in a good position: \u201cWe are lucky in that we have some very strong clients – not like those who pop up because they see a beneficial tax structure; that only leads to a vessel without a real demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the same subject of artificial market drivers she\u2019s clear that you \u201ccan\u2019t make people pay\u201d for ecofriendly transport. \u201cThose companies who can trade with greener and more energy efficient vessels will get the cargo because big brands will want to advertise their supply chain.\u201d So while she likes the idea of a \u2018green mark\u2019 on transport goods, she\u2019s aware that \u201cit may be a long time before it takes hold – before people start making proactive choices\u201d.<\/p>\n
Orsel makes a valid point when she says: \u201cIt\u2019s too easy if you own a company just to whine about what\u2019s not right… but you need to step up and engage with policymakers \u2013 whether local, regional, national or international level.\u201d She follows that through by being very proactive herself \u2013 vice chair of the Dutch Shipowner Association (KVNR) and board member of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS).<\/p>\n
While she admits such commitments can eat away at your time, she points out: \u201cIt also raises the profile of your company. I don\u2019t like the term role-model but there are simply not enough women who are willing to step up… we need to make the time to do these kinds of things, and not walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other hand, her involvement with Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association (WISTA) is rather different \u2013 despite being international chair, she hadn\u2019t heard of it til 2003. However, it was here that she met \u201ca lot of women with the same passion for the industry as I had\u201d. She says it has provided her with connections throughout the industry chain and a reservoir of \u201ccapacity and knowledge\u201d to call on. It\u2019s also given her some remarkably useful moments of insight: for example how a beckoning with fingers upward could be read by Philippine crew as insulting.<\/p>\n
Further, she adds: \u201cWhile I don\u2019t think it should be a written rule… I do tell the agencies to be on the lookout for women. If they\u2019ve got so far they will already be certain it\u2019s where they want to be. Of course it\u2019s always about quality, but we need to stop saying a woman can\u2019t be onboard a vessel because she is not capable of coping.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt\u2019s like an addiction,\u201d says Karin Orsel, CEO of MF Shipping Group. \u201cYou get a taste for this industry and you don\u2019t want to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4181,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions\/4181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4179"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}