Executive Interview: Bjørn Højgaard, CEO, Anglo-Eastern Ship Management

Executive Interview: Bjørn Højgaard, CEO, Anglo-Eastern Ship Management. A master mariner and lifelong lover of the sea, Højgaard is committed to helping shape a better maritime future – for both Anglo-Eastern and the entire industry.

Let’s start with you, Bjørn. Tell us about yourself – your background and education and how you found your way to the maritime industry.

I grew up in the rural part of Denmark as a very normal, middle-class child. My parents were both public school teachers. They had a stint in Greenland as teachers, so I spent a couple of years there as well. I had no relation to the sea – either through family or otherwise – but I just loved it from a very young age. I got into the water any chance I had. I started windsurfing and scuba diving when I was 10 and knew very early on that I wanted to work with the sea and that's how I ended up in shipping.

You served in the Danish Royal Navy, right?

Yes. After college, I joined the navy and learned the ropes and then switched to the commercial side. I was fortunate to join Maersk which, being from Denmark, was sort of the obvious place to try your luck. Maersk was very good to me, gave me opportunities to try things out both at sea and on shore, and I eventually captained one of their largest container ships and became Managing Director of a major Maersk subsidiary. 

In 2007, I decided it was time to try something different. I was living in Hong Kong at the time and wound up in ship management, which was an industry I only knew from the perspective of a shipowner and operator. I didn't know the concept of outsourced ship management, but I absolutely loved it. 

I spent the first four years in the industry with Thome, which is Norwegian-owned but Singapore-based. I returned to Hong Kong in early 2012 to head up Univan. Three years later, Univan merged with Anglo-Eastern where I continued as CEO. And that was nine years ago, so quite the journey. Time flies, doesn't it?

Indeed it does. Tell us about the history of ship management – of the industry itself. When did it start and who came up with the idea? 

It's a good question. I mean, ship management as we know it today probably started in the early Seventies, and there were a number of incumbents. Univan, founded by Captain Charles A.J. Vanderperre, was one of them. He was sort of the father of ship management. He passed away in 2009 at the age of 87 – before I joined in 2012 – and he was still running the company literally from his deathbed. He was in a hospital in Thailand and people were flying from Hong Kong to Thailand to get the checks signed once a week to pay the expenses of the company. 

Anglo-Eastern, started by Peter Nash in 1974, was another early entrant, and Wallem was into it as well. 

The outsourcing model was really in response to owners who wanted to trade assets and didn't want the trouble and expense of having their own organization that they needed for maybe two years, and then a year when they don't need it, and then there's another two years when they do. So having a little bit of flexibility in terms of being able to buy and sell assets without scaling your organization rapidly up and down is a big advantage of using ship managers. 

Has the business of ship management changed much over the years?

The last five years have seen dramatic change in shipping and certainly in ship management. The first 35 years of my career we had one kind of engine with one kind of fuel or maybe two. But in the last five years we've seen scrubbers, low-sulfur fuels and regulations, a future defined by maybe ammonia, methanol or hybrid engines, all kinds of energy-saving devices and incredible advances in connectivity and digitalization. 

So ship management has become exceptionally complicated and complex. The green energy transition and the digital transformation are like the defining themes overlaying ship management today, which is not to diminish the foundational elements of having good people fit for purpose, coming back to the same ship or fleet of ships again and again, people who understand the requirements of the trade, the needs of the cargo and the needs of the charterers and owners.

We note three different kinds of ship management services listed on your website – Technical Management, Crew Management and Project Management. What’s the difference between them?

Yes, it's not terribly well understood. Technical Management means full-service ship management. It means we’re responsible for the safety of the ship and the cargo and the people on board. We’re responsible for the manning and training on board. We’re responsible for carrying the cargo from point A to point B safely and reliably, and we’re also responsible for making sure that the ship is kept up to snuff in terms of standards and maintenance and that it has valid certificates throughout its lifetime. 

That's the sort of all-encompassing service offerings of a ship manager.

But some owners want to keep most of that within their own organization and need help with only the Crew Management bit. Maybe they have five, 10, 20 ships. And that's where we provide just the hands, if you will, making sure we put together a team of officers and ratings who are certified and fit for that particular ship and who then get trained in that shipowner's document of compliance, his safety management system, his way of doing things. So it's a slightly different model. 

Today we have about 700 ships in ship management, which is full technical ship management. We have another 500 or so ships in crew management. Sometimes all 21 or 22 or 23 crew are provided, sometimes only the officers, sometimes only the ratings.

The third leg, which you’ve seen on our website, is Project Management – really everything that sits outside but has to do with the technical aspects of ships. For instance, newbuilds and conversions, retrofits, energy-efficiency projects, drydock supervision. We've been doing this for the last 30+ years, and we’ve built or helped our clients build roughly 1,000 ships in yards all around the world.

So we’re very much a technically focused ship management company. We don’t get involved with the commercial side of the business – the chartering of ships, fixtures and the like. Most owners do that themselves. We’re populated by former chief engineers, former ship masters and even architects. That’s who we are and where we come from.  

What percent of the global fleet is run by ship management companies?

I think it's a fifth or maybe even less than a fifth. Smaller ships would not be candidates. Coastal trade would not be candidates or only in rare cases. But if we consider ships above 10,000 tons deadweight, we have about 60,000 ships in the world, and of those I'd say 10 to 12,000 are managed by companies like Anglo-Eastern. Now we’re not all in the “many-hundreds-of-ships” category. There are many ship managers out there with just 20 or 30 ships on the books.  

    However, given the increasing complexity of managing ships and the seismic changes over the last five years – partly technological and partly regulatory – I think having the scale and depth and breadth to manage that complexity, like we do, should be increasingly attractive to many owners and a wise choice. It’s become much more of a technological and regulatory burden for owners, and I think many more will resort to outsourcing to ship managers.

“Doing the right things the right way.” That seems to sum up Anglo-Eastern’s values and differentiate it somewhat from others. What does it mean in practice?

Yes, that’s something that very much permeates our company today. What it means is that, as a company, we’re not an island. We don't exist in a vacuum. We’re part of a bigger world, and we get from that world and we have to give back to that world, and we all like to one day hopefully leave the world a better place than when we entered it. And there's a lot we can all do on that journey through life.

As a company, we're basically trying to add value. Ship management at its core is putting together a bunch of elements, shaking the bag and hopefully what comes out is more valuable than what it costs to produce. And that extra value can then be given to the client. It can be given to shareholders. It can be given to staff. It can be given to seafarers. It can be given to suppliers. It shouldn't be just one party that benefits from all that value creation. It should be shared by everyone who is part of the journey, including the communities we work in. 

So it sits very much in the DNA of the company that we should be doing things right and we should be doing the right things. And if we stick to that and do that consistently, then over time we find it builds trust and it builds understanding and it builds some emotional credit, which can then help to solve issues when they arise and challenges when they arise on the business side.

The other thing is, as I said before, we are captains, we are chief engineers and naval architects. Engineering is in our DNA. We believe people by and large patronize our business because of our experience, our expertise, our competencies, our understanding of the technical intricacies of managing ships. So we keep saying, yes, let's make sure we do the right things, no shortcuts, and do it the right way.

How do you unwind? What do you like to do in your spare time?

I like to hike with my wife and our dogs. My people probably don't know this, but Hong Kong is an amazing place for hiking. We have 700 kilometers of pristine hiking trails in Hong Kong. It’s only 28 percent built up. There's 72 percent of Hong Kong that’s country parks and mountainous trails, and it's an amazing place to wind down and relax and recharge. That's the best relaxation for me. 

I also have a little open motor boat and like to go out if the weather is nice and just find a secluded bay somewhere and drop anchor and swim and walk on the beach. That's sort of, again, connecting with nature, connecting with water, being out there. That's how I recharge my batteries.

Wonderful! One last question. Is Anglo-Eastern the biggest ship management company?

It depends on how you count. I think in number of ships, we should be. In terms of revenue, we're probably not because we don't have the breadth of services that some other companies do. Again, we’re not a commercial operator. We don't try and do stuff that doesn't speak to our inner passion. We’re very focused on keeping it to doing things that really resonate with the kind of company we are. And because of that, we're probably not the biggest. 

It's also not important. I think what’s important is to keep lifting the bar for performance, keep innovating, driving progress, building trust and making a better maritime future. That's really what this is all about. – MarEx 

Tony Munoz is The Maritime Executive's publisher and editor-in-chief.