Boudreau named regional executive at Safmarine

Boudreau named regional executive at Safmarine    John Boudreau has been promoted to regional executive for the Americas at the Safmarine Container Lines unit of the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group.

Boudreau

   Boudreau was president of Safmarine Inc., the company’s agency in North America.
   Boudreau will continue to be based in Madison, N.J., but now is responsible for Safmarine activities in the United States and Canada as well as Latin America where today the company has operations in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Safmarine has about 150 people in the Americas. Country managers in those countries will report to Boudreau. He replaces Jens Norgaard, who is relocating to Belgium to be the head of sales and marketing for Safmarine globally.
   Boudreau said about 10 Safmarine services touch countries in North and South America from the Far East, Middle East, Europe, South Africa, East Africa and West Africa. Safmarine exited the trade several years ago between the U.S. East Coast and South America East Coast, and Boudreau said he does not expect a resumption of that anytime soon because of difficult trade conditions, but said service between Latin America and other parts of the world will be important.
   “We are a pretty high growth brand within the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, typically doubling in size every four years, and a lot of that growth has to come from new services and developing trade lanes where there is strong economic development. South American economies are a bit more vibrant than the current U.S. economy, so a lot of the growth is expected to come on existing services by growing our volumes in those trades and potentially by opening new services to destinations in the Americas.”
   Last month A.P. Moller said it was ordering 18 4,500-TEU containerships from South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries for delivery in 2011 and 2012. Three of those ships will be Safmarine investments, painted white with the company’s livery, and deployed in the African trades to high growth trade partners such as Asia and South America. The ships are on the large side for the African trade — though Safmarine does operate some 6,500-TEU ships. They are specially designed for the African trade with shallow draft and greater-than-Panamax width.
   While Safmarine participates in space-sharing agreements with Maersk, the companies pursue distinct marketing strategies. Forwarders and non-vessel-operating common carrier customers are a large component of Safmarine’s business and its capacity and product offering is smaller than Maersk's.
   “So we generally gravitate towards midsize to smaller customers,” Boudreau said. “We don’t have the capacity to offer the major retailers on many of the major trade lanes that we serve, so we tend to focus on customers where we have a common perspective as to how we fit into their world and they fit into ours.” ' Chris Dupin