The cluster comprises three territories – Mauritius & Indian Ocean Islands (IOI), South Africa and Namibia – under the leadership of Area Manager Arnaud Teycheney based in Port Louis, who stepped into the role in September last year. Here, Country Manager Stefanus Dalhouzie in Cape Town and respective Operations Managers Christopher Bazerque in Port Louis and J’Corbin Deklerk in Walvis Bay, share insights into their respective stations’ scope and reach, noteworthy features and what gets them jumping out of bed in the morning.
All three territories are key locations offering a wealth of services, including strong project management support. Where customers choose to call depends very much on operational requirements and vessel type. Some may prefer a location such as Mauritius with comparatively stable weather and a straightforward visa process for crew changes, others to do a crew change in Mauritius and, depending on their supply chain set-up, pick up spares in Cape Town or Walvis Bay as a last stop before continuing westwards. “Whatever their requirements, customers can engage solely with Inchcape from east to west in full confidence that our dedicated teams can support them with their fluid needs in a predictable manner, allowing optimal operational flexibility,” says Teycheney.
Port coverage in Mauritius & IOI includes Port Louis, Port Reunion in Reunion, Port Victoria and other small islands in the Seychelles, Longoni and Mamoudzou in Mayotte, and Mutsamudu and Moroni in the Comoros. “In terms of services, we have port agency covering the full range of services including general husbandry, cargo operations and crew changes etc, inspection and surveys including underwater hull inspections and bunker surveys, freight forwarding and customs brokerage. We’re active in just about every sector – wet, dry and offshore as well as naval vessels and cruise,” Teycheney says.
“All these services are in-house, which is unique in Mauritius. There are no competitors who can supply all this under one roof. The main benefit is customers can use Inchcape as a one-stop shop so avoiding a fragmented supply with multiple vendors.”
In terms of customer markets, charterer nominations originate mainly in Singapore, Dubai and Switzerland, which is a hub for large global commodities traders/charterers like Bunge, Louis Dreyfus and Trafigura. Shipowner business comes mainly from Greece, India and China.
“Right now we’re doing around 50 jobs a month, ably managed by my superb team of 12, all hands-on people with years of experience. They’re known in the market and know the ISS way inside out in terms of documentation and procedures. It’s a good mix of local knowledge and global expertise – obviously, we can plug into our global network whenever we need specialist advice,” Teycheney says.
Noteworthy features
Mauritius is a very important strategic link in the major trades between east and west (from Asia to Africa, Europe and the US), even more so now that many vessels are choosing to go around the Cape of Good Hope as a result of the Red Sea situation. “Since October last year, our number of port calls has doubled, and, in some months, even tripled,” Operations Manager Christopher Bazerque says.
Port Louis is a well-established bunkering hub with plenty capacity. “We can do bunkering, hull cleaning, crew changes, spare parts delivery, etc., in the anchorage so ships don’t have to berth in port – which is a huge advantage. We have six bunkering barges and can accommodate more than 10 ships at a time for a temporary pit stop, to use a Formula One expression,” he adds.
“Turnaround is relatively quick compared to Cape Town/Durban, where bunkering has to be done at berth, but in the past months our challenge is simply catering for the demand. So although still insignificant, waiting time to get an anchoring position is longer than what it was before. Unfortunately, technical calls outside port limits (OPL) are not allowed in Port Louis. That’s life but the vessels still roll in.”
The weather in Mauritius is also quite stable and conducive for operations. “Port Louis is in the northwest of the island in a bay protected by mountains. We face a trade wind predominantly in the opposite direction and there can be occasional disruption when the wind shifts direction, perhaps three to four times a year but only for a matter of days,” Bazerque says.
Another reason that a lot of principals are calling in Mauritius is the favourable local immigration law, which is very visa-lenient, so it is straightforward to get seafarers in and out. “What is also not well known is our huge air lift capacity at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport – much greater than Cape Town and even Durban – with direct flights to Europe, Africa and Asia. The only airport that can compete in the Southern Hemisphere is Johannesburg but transiting there can be complicated if you’re not familiar with the gates,” Bazerque adds.
Recent project activities
One of the Mauritius station’s most demanding recent projects was an extended eight-month dredging campaign for Dredging International in Port Louis. The Mauritius Ports Authority dredged the right part of the port to accommodate bigger ships at berth for commercial calls (discharging and loading of containers and cargo) and is using the dredged material for land reclamation to build new berths.
“Previously draft was limited to 10 metres for bulk and wet vessels, and 13 metres for container ships. Now it’s 12 and 16 metres, respectively. It was two projects in one, and the duration of the work made it more challenging than, for example, our FPSO job [see below] in 2023,” Bazerque says. “We had a lot of temporary importation of heavy bulk equipment like big hoses and drilling kit, where customs clearance is more complicated than the typical cargo status of ship’s spares for delivery to vessels. Once the master’s signed and stamped the paperwork, the job’s done. But in this case, we needed a lot of additional items like bank guarantees and certificates. Plus we had to make deposits in case of mishaps or damages, then after the project it all had to be repacked and shipped out.”
He adds that there were a lot of crew changes and temporary importation of ships, as well. “So it was a very big job for us, with quite a few headaches to sort out, but a one-of-a-kind project that doesn’t happen very often. For example, the last dredging campaign was over 10 years ago.”
The Mauritius office collaborated with Singapore, South Africa (Durban) and Namibia (Walvis Bay) in handling an FPSO on its journey from China to the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim field offshore Mauritania and Senegal. During the stay, the team handled crew changes, spares in transit, major husbandries including sludge, grey water and garbage removal, surveys and inspection, and procurement. “One other important achievement in this project was that we managed to get authorisation from several ministries – for the first time ever – allowing a foreign-flag tug to bunker a foreign-flag FPSO on DP [Dynamic Positioning], that is without having to bank up against the FPSO,” says Teycheney.
Earlier this year, Teycheney’s team handled a similar project, an FPSO on its east-west journey from China to the Mero field in Brazil, also in conjunction with Dalhousie’s team in Cape Town. “So, my message is that Inchcape is very well prepared to handle all required agency aspects for these giant floaters stopping in Mauritius, South Africa or Namibia on their way to their final destinations in Europe, South America and West Africa,” he says.
Expansion opportunities
Teycheney is sanguine on the potential for growth on the port agency side in Mauritius. “As a small island in the middle of Indian Ocean, we’re never going to become a hub like Singapore, we’re simply too far from the main markets. We have two small dry docks for repairs, but these can only accommodate ships of up to 110 metres, which rules out large tonnage. However, we are definitely looking to grow our technical capability in marine surveys and inspection. We have the required expertise and we’re very strategically located.”
What he loves about his job is, one, it is never monotonous, with every day bringing a new challenge. “Even though I’ve been in the agency business nearly 25 years – I joined our family agency business when I was 21 – I learn something every day. Plus it’s no nine-to-five job. Secondly, you get to meet a lot of people from different countries and get to know their mentality, way of living and working, which I find exciting. “
Motivating the team
To be an effective leader, Teycheney stresses the importance of experience from all departments in developing business acumen and to understand the challenges involved. “We sold our family business to Inchcape in 2012. We had smaller volumes but our own portfolio of customers doing freight forwarding, custom clearance and port agency. I started in accounting, then moved to admin, finance and finally operations, boarding ships every hour of the day and night.”
Down in South Africa, Inchcape’s port coverage embraces the ports of Cape Town, Saldanha, Mossel Bay, Port Elizabeth, Coega, Durban and Richards Bay. “On the service side we do port agency, freight forwarding, customs clearance and act as an offshore supply base, handing roughly 45 jobs every month including dry, wet, offshore, project cargo, drydocking and general husbandry. For freight forwarding we’ve got our own transport and two warehouses, one in Durban and one in Cape Town. We also forward cargo from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth because the airport at Port Elizabeth is too small,” says Country Manager Stefanus Dalhouzie.
Most charterers’ nominations deal with major South African commodities exports like iron ore and coal to Singapore and China. The owners’ market includes USA and Europe. “We handle mainly owners’ matters simply because South Africa is in the centre-point for most shipping traffic. So, we get a lot of crew and bunkering requests, with most work in Durban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.”
Noteworthy features
South Africa is obviously much bigger than Mauritius, with a lot more availability of stores and provisions produced locally. “It’s also logistically easy to do crew changes here. We have good airports with international flights arriving in Durban and Cape Town as well as feeder flights from Johannesburg. Johannesburg carries most of our overweight cargoes that we can truck down. Then we’ve got about 16 hotels just in Cape Town city centre, eight or nine in Durban close to the harbour and five in Port Elizabeth within 10 kilometres of the port,” Dalhouzie says.
In terms of price, he adds that Cape Town is cheaper than Mauritius because OPL calls are allowed, and he and his commercial team are working hard to offer attractive OPL rates. “OPL has drastically increased with all the issues that the Red Sea. We’re looking at about 200 calls a month now just in Cape Town. We’re 24/7 OPL-licensed and have five local launch companies on call, each with three to four launch vessels each. The biggest can carry 30 to 40 tons of stores, provisions and oil. Everything is allowed for OPL, except for hazardous cargo, so it’s very easy to get goods to a vessel. There’s no berth use, so it’s purely the agency fee and launch hire.”
Recent project activities
The South Africa team recently handled a large project in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town simultaneously, with around eight to nine vessels schooling over five months for a seismic campaign. “There was the big streamer vessel that did the actual seabed surveys and at any one time there were four of five trans vessels to take care of both for crew logistics and stores procurement. We did over 400 crew changes and landed 30 consignments per month of spares in transit. The support vessels were coming into port every week or sometimes even twice a week to pick up stores, spares and sea. I started out working for an offshore seismic company and got experience in offshore project management, so this was right up my street,” says Dalhouzie.
They also participated in two FPSO projects in South Africa with one calling in Durban and the other calling in Cape Town, requiring over crew changes, spares in transit and procurement.
Knowing who’s who
“Arnaud’s point about strong local knowledge and the ability to access Inchcape’s global network also goes for South Africa,” Dalhouzie adds. “It’s about knowing who to approach to get things done. In South Africa, we deal a lot with state freight logistics giant Transnet so we’re familiar with who’s who there. Then you want to onside with immigration and customs, and we do everything by the book. Some cut-price competitors get into trouble occasionally, and we often get phone calls to sort things out.
Dalhouzie loves his work mainly because “it’s no simple nine-to-five idea where you just sit and do the same thing over and over again. I relish challenges and there’s lots of them”.
Getting his staff to make clients happy is his constant goal. “When a client presents with something I know they didn’t think about properly, figuring it out for them is very rewarding. I like to say as long as it floats in the water, we can do anything with it.”
Up around the corner in Namibia, Inchcape’s operation covers two ports, Walvis Bay and Lüderitz in the south. “We do around 12 jobs per month handling everything from bunkering, husbandry, drydocking and ship repairs, freight forwarding and customs brokerage across wet, dry, project cargo, navy and cruise customers. We’re very strong on bunker calls and supply stores and provisions to vessels in the outer anchorages,” says recently appointed Operations Manager J’Corbin Deklerk.
“Walvis Bay is perfect for ships going around the Cape to avoid the Red Sea. Within a matter of days in December there were up to 15 vessels lined up for bunkering but it has slowed down a bit since. In the last two months, it’s mostly been crew changes. We’re pretty strong in efficient Crew Logistics Services where most of our customers are shipmanagers.”
He adds that the visa regime is pretty lenient but the process can be a bit intense sometimes, compared to Mauritius, because immigration officials have become strict on checking passport signatures against actual paperwork. “And quite rightly as some companies have done some dodgy stuff in the past. But we proactively help our clients by, for example, making it very easy to fill out visa applications and power of attorney letters step by step. We’ve already had 20 crew injections for the one drydock vessel we have in port.”
Noteworthy features
Walvis Bay is closer to North America and Europe than any of South Africa’s ports, and in 2020 NamPort completed a new container terminal facility that now handles 750,000 TEU per year. The port is also home to Namibia Drydock & Ship Repair (Namdock) offering world-class repair services. Walvis Bay is also positioning itself to become ‘dry port’ of choice for neighbouring Botswana, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an increasing amount of cargo is originating. “We’re also seeing regular incoming shipments of mining equipment. So far, we haven’t received any such nominations but we hope to pick up some of this business in the future. There are also a lot of salt vessels calling in Walvis Bay but we don’t have nominations for that either so far,” Deklerk says.
As well as helping in the FPSO project before it headed off to Senegal, his team are currently responsible for husbandry services, bunkering vessels, ship repair at Namdock, and recently attended calls by superyachts and the first-ever cruise call in Namibia by Virgin Voyages’ Resilient Lady.
Expansion opportunities
Deklerk adds that Inchcape’s future in Namibia lies in servicing the oil and gas industry with everything from crew change, repairs and rig husbandry. “This follows significant discoveries made in the Orange Basin off southern Namibia in 2022 and 2023. These include the Graff-1, Venus-1 and Jonker-1X exploration projects, which have attracted supermajors as well as multinational energy corporations. We’re also going to develop more capacity in Lüderitz, so that’s going to be our big focus in the next few years as activity picks up.”
On the staff side, the Namibia team numbers four handling both Walvis Bay and Lüderitz, working alongside five Hapag-Lloyd staff (Inchcape handles commercial liner agency business out of Namibia for the German carrier). “We can do basically everything from here including special operations, gearing and forwarding. Having previously worked with mostly liner and dry bulk cargoes, I love getting into the thick of things, learning new stuff every day,” Deklerk concludes.