Wallenius Wilhelmsen hires ex-Sydney Ports boss to lead Oceania

Wallenius Wilhelmsen hires ex-Sydney Ports boss to lead Oceania

Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) has appointed Greg Martin, former Sydney Ports Corp. chief executive officer, as its new Oceania regional director.

   Martin will join the Scandinavian shipping firm on Oct. 6 after 11 years in charge of the Australian port, from which he resigned last week. He will overlap with WWL’s current Oceania leader Lauritz Andersen until Dec. 1, when Martin will formally assume the leadership role.

   After two years heading the Oceania region Andersen is being called back to WWL’s central office in Norway to lead an unidentified “special project” for company CEO Arild Iversen.

   Peter Dexter continues as chairman of WWL in Oceania.

   Meanwhile, WWL has opened a new technical services facility in Kemblawarra, near Port Kembla in New South Wales, some 56 miles south of its former base in Sydney. The opening of the new facility is a precursor to the company switching its port operations from Sydney to Port Kembla in October.

   WWL has invested A$5.6 million ($4.6 million) in the new 42,300-square-meter site with another $1.23 million ($1 million) coming from the Australian government’s AusIndustry PKIFF fund.

   “The new center is part of our regional strategy for building a sustainable best-in-class technical services infrastructure in Australia for our customers,” said outgoing Oceania boss Andersen. “It will help to support our aim of providing a global integrated quality factory-to-dealer logistics service to vehicle makers.”