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the 2000s and the company was experiencing
some difficult times.
Help came in the form of Parisian broking
firm Barry Rogliano Salles.
“We had on our board Mr Jean-François
Cristau, the CEO of Barry Rogliano Salles,”
says Kanerva. “He told us he would discuss
with his colleague François Cadiou, look into
the fleet modernisation market and identify its
needs. It turned out that there was a need for
handy-size bulkers that we could fulfil. Barry
Rogliano Salles, or BRS, is one of the largest
broking firms in the world. Our Managing
Director Alf Björkman had connections with it
from our shipyard days, and I was acquainted
with some of their brokers too.”
François Cadiou became a board member
of Deltamarin in 2005: “Our former
Chairman and CEO Jean-François Cristau was
a board member of Deltamarin,” says Cadiou.
“Deltamarin was a company very well known
for ro-ros, ferries and special cruise ships, and
Mr Cristau was very much involved with cruise
ships and ferries as a shipbroker. He decided
to step down in 2005, and he suggested to
Deltamarin that they appoint me. The fact that
Deltamarin decided to have board members
from outside was in my view a very smart
move.” Cadiou recalls his time in the history
of Deltamarin: “I remember that we went
to China together in the mid-90s for the
construction of some special ships, ro-ros. We
also went there for an Airbus project, another
special ro-ro named Ville de Bordeaux – which
was delivered in 2004 and is still in service. It
was built at the Jinling shipyard in China.”
“Back then, Deltamarin had a number of
specific design contracts with certain Chinese
yards, but they were unable to take a larger
market share in the construction of what I’m
calling standard ships: bulkers, tankers and
container carriers. That’s why, at some time in
2007, we had a discussion together and said,
‘We need to do something, something to take a
bigger share of the market.’”
“The good thing about China for a designer
was that, unlike Japan, South Korea or Europe,
the shipyards in China are production centres.
They have limited design capabilities, so
design institutes are separate bodies from
shipyards. There were opportunities for
designers who could develop a design and
sell it to several shipyards, because the
shipyards needed to have a body of designers.
Obviously, the idea was to gain a foothold
in what was and still is the main type of
production ship in China – bulkers.”
“We did some market studies together
with Deltamarin to define what would be the
best size or class of bulkers, and we ended
up with the preliminary idea of developing
EXTRA VOLUME FROM CHINA AND B.DELTA