Who’s Who: Maritime Movements for April 2020

WORK BOAT WORLD:

Gurit has announces that it will split the business unit Composite Materials into Wind Materials and Marine and Industrial Materials. Lance Hill, currently Regional Sales Director for the Americas region, has been promoted to General Manager Marine and Industrial Materials effective May 1, 2020. A search for the new General Manager Wind Materials position is in progress and will be announced in due time.

Scotland-based Malin Group is introducing a new hatches product range to its current marine offering and has appointed Fraser Gunn as its new business unit manager. Gunn will be tasked with spearheading the company’s provision of gas and watertight hatches and doors for fixed and floating offshore platforms and marine craft. Gunn brings more than 20 years’ experience in supplying door and hatch products to the marine and offshore sectors, including A60, watertight, weatherproof and shock resistant products.

The President of the Republic of France has ratified the proposal made by Naval Group’s board of directors to appoint Pierre Éric Pommellet as Chairman of the group’s board of directors and to delegate to him the duties of Chief Executive Officer. As the terms of office of several directors just came to an end, the Board of Directors has been partly renewed.

Rolls-Royce Power Systems is expanding its management board. The supervisory board has appointed Otto Preiss as Chief Operating Officer (COO) to the management board, starting May 1. In the course of a professional career spanning over 30 years at power and automation specialist ABB, Preiss has accumulated wide-ranging experience in various global leadership positions. Most recently he was Group Senior Vice President, acting in the role of Chief Operating Officer Digital, and prior to that headed up ABB’s global Motors and Generators division.

SHIP WORLD:

Hans Schäfer, current Managing Director Global Sales in Hapag-Lloyd’s Hamburg Headquarters, will assume the position of Senior Managing Director of Region Asia, as of July 1, 2020. Schäfer will replace Lars Christiansen, who will resign from his position as Senior Managing Director Region Asia effective June 30, 2020. Christiansen will return to his home country Denmark for family reasons. Schäfer started at the company in 1994 as a trainee at the company headquarters and since then he has held several management positions in Vietnam, Singapore and Hamburg. He took over his current position as Managing Director Global Sales in 2014. Schäfer will relocate to Singapore together with his family.

Former practicing marine surveyor Kelly Tolhurst has been appointed as the new UK Maritime Minister. Kelly has been the Conservative member of parliament (MP) for Rochester and Strood since 2015. Prior to being appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, Tolhurst was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2018. Her remit specifically includes work on freeports.

Lasse Carøe Henningsen is to become the new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Hamburg Süd. He will be succeeding the current CFO Jakob Wegge-Larsen, who has held this position since December 2017 and will be returning to Maersk in Copenhagen at the end of June. In February 2020, he assumed the position of CFO of the Maersk division Ocean and Logistics in parallel with his role at Hamburg Süd. When Lasse Carøe Henningsen starts at Hamburg Süd on June 1, he will be in charge of the Business Finance and Accounting divisions as well as the SAP project. He and Dr. Arnt Vespermann, the company’s CEO, will together make up the Management Board of Hamburg Süd.