Oldendorff Carriers is a family owned

shipping Freight transport, also referred to as freight forwarding, is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it has been ...

company with headquarters in

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

Oldendorff Carriers GmbH & Co. KG is the largest German

bulk carrier A bulk carrier or bulker is a merchant ship specially naval architecture, designed to transport unpackaged bulk cargo—such as Grain trade, grain, coal, ore, steel coils, and cement—in its cargo holds. Since the first specialized bulk carrie ...

company. It operates around 700 ships, some chartered, with a carrying capacity of approximately 57 million tonnes.

Company

The Oldendorff fleet makes some 14,000 port calls in 60 countries, carrying about 320 million tons of bulk cargo and bulk goods a year. Growth has been rapid since 2005, when 50 million tons was carried. Oldendorff Carriers is a wholly owned subsidiary of a family holding company, Egon Oldendorff. The headquarters in Lübeck have been on the top floor of the

Radisson Blu Radisson Blu is an international hotel brand managed and operated by Radisson Hotels, and owned by Choice Hotels, Jinjiang International and the Radisson Hotel Group. Founded as the SAS Hotels in 1960, the Radisson Blu brand name came into exi ...

Senator Hotel since 1999. Around 4,000 employees work for the company, including 210 at the company headquarters, nicknamed "The Dorff", and more than 100 in 17 branch offices in Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, Stamford, Singapore, Mumbai, Melbourne, Shanghai, Tokyo, Vancouver, Cape Town,

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

New Amsterdam New Amsterdam (, ) was a 17th-century Dutch Empire, Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading ''Factory (trading post), fac ...

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger, more populous island of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is the southernmost island in ...

, Hong Kong, Iskenderun, Dubai, Varna The fleet employs well over 2,000 sailors.

History

On 19 February 1921, 21-year-old Egon Oldendorff joined a small shipping company in Hamburg as a partner, where he trained for nine months. The shipping company was renamed Lilienfeld & Oldendorff and taken over by Oldendorff at the end of the year. The company's first ship was an 870-ton steamer, ''Planet'', built in

Rostock Rostock (; Polabian language, Polabian: ''Roztoc''), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (), is the largest city in the German States of Germany, state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the sta ...

in 1881. The company moved to Lübeck in 1925. At the outbreak of

World War 2 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilisin ...

, the company owned 13 ships, but only the ''Gisela Oldendorff'' and the ''Nordmark'' remained after the war. The fleet grew rapidly in the early 1950s due to the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

. The operation of bulk carriers started in 1958 with the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

timber trade. In 1964, Klaus E. Oldendorff, one of the sons of the company's founder, left to start the shipping company Reederei Nord in Hamburg. In 1980, 23-year-old Henning Oldendorff took over as CEO from his 80-year-old father, who died on May 9, 1984, leaving Henning as the majority shareholder. In 1995 Henning founded another shipping company, Concept Carriers, which merged in January 2001 with the main company to form Oldendorff Carriers. Increasingly the company has been buying its ships from Chinese yards, which it has described as a good experience.

Transhipment

Since starting at Iskenderun in 2001, then

Musaffah Port Musaffah Port () is an Abu Dhabi Ports' port located in the industrial area of Musaffah south west of the city of Abu Dhabi. The deepwater Musaffah Port and Musaffah Channel include a general cargo terminal at the northwest corner of the Musaffah ...

's Emirates Steel from 2007, the company has developed schemes to transfer 30 million tons a year of its cargoes out at sea between large ships and barges at eight ports. The company operates 4 transloaders, 4

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and 2 transhipment platforms.

Fleet

As at January 2019 the company had 716 ships in service, or under construction, 143 of them owned by the company (OWN) and others as

index Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on the Halo Array in the ...

chartered vessels on floating charter (T/C), or

Bareboat charter A bareboat charter, or demise charter, is an arrangement for the chartering or hiring of a ship or boat for which no crew or provisions are included as part of the agreement. Instead, the renter of the vessel from the owner is responsible for ...

s (B/B). Of those 165 were

Capesize Capesize ships are the largest dry cargo ships with ball mark dimension: about 170,000 DWT (deadweight tonnage) capacity, long, beam (wide), draught (under water depth). They are too large to transit the Suez Canal ( Suezmax limits) or ...

, 206

Panamax Panamax and New Panamax (or Neopanamax) are terms for the size limits for ships traveling through the Panama Canal. The limits and requirements are published by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) in a publication titled "Vessel Requirements". ...

, 178

Supramax Handymax and Supramax are naval architecture terms for the larger bulk carriers in the Handysize class. Handysize class consists of Supramax (50,000 to 60,000 DWT), Handymax (40,000 to 50,000 DWT), and Handy (<40,000 DWT). The ships are used fo ...

, 111

Handysize Handysize is a naval architecture term for smaller bulk carriers or oil tanker with deadweight of up to 50,000 tonnes, although there is no official definition in terms of exact tonnages. Handysize is also sometimes used to refer to the span of ...

and 56 used for transhipment. Total dwt amounted to 60,881,703 and the average age of the fleet was 8 years. The company planned to receive four new ships from Japan's Oshima Shipbuilding in March 2020.

References

{{reflist Shipping companies of Germany Transport companies established in 1921 Dry bulk shipping companies Privately held companies of Germany

Company

History

Transhipment

Fleet

See also

References