The
Ocean Steamship Co.
(Alfred Holt Group) (Est. 1865) |
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The history of the Alfred
Holt ‘s Ocean Shipping Group
begins in 1865, when two brothers, Alfred and Philip Holt of Its purpose was to provide a
regular
steamship cargo service from This was an ambitious
project requiring a
large investment. It involved building three ships, each of 2,280 tons,
iron-hulled, and powered by a new type of compound steam engine
designed by
Alfred Holt, who was an engineer. He and his brother were the sons of a
wealthy Their gamble paid off. The
ships performed
well and the cargoes followed: in the early days the chief goods
transported
were cotton textiles, which went from Selecting Key Agents The commercial success of
the line was due
partly to the Holts' high standing in the Another fruitful agency
appointment, and one
which owed nothing to the Liverpool connection, was that of Only three years after the
Holts started
their Fleet Expansion,
Takeovers, and Joint
Enterprises: 1890s-Early 1900s Despite all this expansion,
Ocean's profits
began to decline in the 1880s. Competition from other steamship owners
was
driving freight rates down and the Blue Funnel ships were being
overtaken in
carrying capacity and speed by more modern ships. It became necessary
to
replace virtually the whole fleet if the company was to survive. A decisive move was made in
1892, when four
new ships were ordered and ten old ones transferred to feeder services.
In the
course of the 1890s, 23 new ships were added to the fleet and its total
tonnage
almost tripled. Ocean had to dig deep into its reserves and borrow from
its
bankers to make this investment, but it laid the foundations for
another surge
of growth in the next two decades. Takeovers and joint
enterprises played an
important role in this second phase of growth. In 1902, Ocean became a
limited
company and bought one of its main competitors on the Liverpool-Far
East route,
the China Mutual Steam Navigation Company Ltd. This added another 13
modern
ships to the Blue Funnel fleet. A few years earlier, Ocean had become
the
majority shareholder in an Amsterdam-based company Nederlandsche
Stoomvart
Maatschappij Oceaan (NSMO), which came to control the bulk of the
tobacco trade
from the Dutch East Indies to However, it was internally
generated growth
that made these investments possible. World trade was growing fast, and
the
Holts and their agents were very active in developing new types of
business.
Tin and rubber from the Malay states, tobacco from the East Indies, and
refrigerated fruit and meat from Two World Wars and the
Great Depression By 1913, the Blue Funnel
fleet numbered 77
ships, and its total tonnage had nearly tripled again from its 1901
level. The
years immediately before World War I brought record profits to Ocean,
and the
war pushed them still higher. Some of the company's ships were
commandeered by
the government at good rates, and freight rates also rose. The In retrospect, the end of
the war and the
short postwar boom proved to be the high watermark of the company's
expansion.
From then on, the Ocean Steamship Co., along with other British
shipowners, had to struggle to
maintain business. In most of the interwar years, world trade was below
its
1913 level and later suffered a severe decline during the first four
years of
the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1933. At the same time, The depression brought about
the collapse of
one British shipping combine, the Royal Mail Group, and Ocean Steamship
Co. was in a strong
enough position to be able to acquire parts of that business at bargain
prices.
It bought the Glen Line in 1935, gaining ten ships serving the Far East
from Then came World War II,
which had a
devastating effect on Ocean Steamship Co.'s business. The Japanese
occupation of When the war ended, the
company--still
headed by a member of the Holt family--courageously set about
rebuilding the
business. Its urgent need for more ships was met by buying some
secondhand and
by having others built abroad. Rebuilding the company's trading
connections,
however, was not so easy. Trade with Birth of Singapore Airlines and Malaysia
Airlines: In 1946, it developed an
interest in
aviation. In partnership with the Straits Steamship Company and
Imperial Airways, Alfred Holt's Ocean Steamship Company incorporated
Malayan
Airways Limited on the 12th October 1947. The airline's first flight
was a chartered flight from the British Straits Settlement of Singapore
to Kuala Lumpur on the 2nd April 1947. Regular
weekly scheduled flights quickly followed from Singapore to Kuala
Lumpur, Ipoh and Penang soon commenced. The airline continued to expand
during the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, as other British Commonwealth
airlines (such as BOAC and Qantas Empire Airways) provided technical
assistance, as well as assistance in joining IATA. Investing
in Containerisation: By the late 1950s, the Blue
Funnel fleet
again numbered almost 70 ships still pursuing traditional liner trade.
Ocean Steamship Co.
was not at this stage interested in oil tankers or bulk carriers, and
the day
of the container had not yet arrived. As a company, Ocean Steamship Co.
was perhaps a shade
too conservative at this time. It was still a family business, owned
and
managed mainly by descendants of the founders. All the directors sat in
one
room at the By then, however, it was
clear that things
had to change. The success of containerization in the Later the same year, two
other far-reaching
decisions were made. The first was to start investing in
containerization. This
meant merging Ocean Steamship Co.'s main business into a larger
grouping to finance the
massive investment required. The other decision, linked to the first,
was to
start diversifying into other branches of the shipping business to
provide new
opportunities for Ocean Steamship Co.'s own organization. The group was spurred into action by reports that the Australian government was keen to containerize and was negotiating with SeaLand, an American company. Neither Ocean Steamship Co. nor its competitors in the Europe-Australia trade could risk losing this business, so four of the British companies, including Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), Furness Withy Group, British & Commonwealth Group and Ocean Steamship Co., jointly set up Overseas Containers Ltd. (OCL) to provide a container service on this route. Overseas
Containers Ltd (OCL) was the largest British container consortium and
was formed in 1966 by British and Commonwealth Shipping Group, Furness
Withy Group, Ocean Transport and Trading Ltd (Alfred Holt Group) and
the P&O Group. The aim of the consortium was to develop and operate
container services on those trade routes in which its partners
operated, with the intention of preserving a major British interest in
these trades. The United Kingdom/Australia trade was the first to be
containerised in 1969 and this was followed by the Far East trade.
These will soon be followed by the containerisation of the New Zealand
trade and the United Kingdom/Europe/South African trade as well as
three trades in the Pacific basin. In 1986 all the partners were
bought out by P&O Group and the operation was renamed P&O
Containers Ltd. In 1996 this was merged with Nedlloyd Line and formed
P&O Nedlloyd. This was later transformed into a stand alone company
as Royal P&O Nedlloyd and finally in 2005 was bought entirely by
the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and merged with Maersk Sealand to form
Maersk Line. OCL began operations in 1969. Within a few years its Australian service was showing a profit, and it had joined a still larger international consortium to containerize the Europe-Far East route. In 1975, after the reopening of the Suez Canal, Ocean Steamship Co. and Ben Line formed a partnership called Ben Ocean to operate conventional liner sailings on the Europe to Far East route. At this point in the early 1970s, Ocean Steamship Co.'s stake in OCL grew to 49 percent, and its Blue Funnel fleet became largely superfluous and that company was discontinued. In anticipation of this,
Ocean Steamship Co. had been
investing in other shipping businesses since 1965. That year it took
over a
company called Liner Holdings. This included the Elder Dempster Line,
in which
Ocean Steamship Co. had held shares since 1936, and other subsidiaries.
Over the next few
years, Ocean Steamship Co. also acquired interests in tankers, bulk
carriers, and cargo handling
services, laying the foundations of much of the company's business
through the
1980s. For example, MSAS Cargo International began in 1968 as McGregor
Swire
Air Services, a joint venture between Ocean Steamship Co. and its
longtime partner, Swire Group.
Panocean Storage & Transport was set up a year later in cooperation
with
P&O. Continued Acquisition and
Expansion Another important
move--because it put Ocean Steamship Co.
into land transport for the first time--was the purchase of William
Cory &
Son Ltd. in 1972. Cory was a long-established company that had first
made its
name carrying coal by sea from northeast It cannot be said that all Ocean Steamship Co.'s diversifications in the 1960s and 1970s were successful. There were a few expensive failures, and there were bad times when the company was itself threatened with takeover. Nevertheless, enough of the new ventures succeeded to provide a strong basis for future growth. The company's remaining
shipowning
interests, apart from OCL and Elder Dempster, were sold off in the late
1970s
and early 1980s. In 1983 its majority share holding in the Straits Steamship
Company (58%) was sold to the Keppel Corporation. In 1986 a decision was made to withdraw
from OCL and Ocean Steamship
Co.'s
then 33 percent holding in OCL was sold to P&O to form P&O
Containers,
and, in
a partial exchange, Ocean Steamship Co. acquired P&O's holding in
Panocean. Two years later in 1988 Blue Funnel ceased to exist with the
sale of its last ship. P&O
Containers then in 1996 became P&O Nedlloyd. This then became Royal
P&O
Nedlloyd in 2004 and then was sold to the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group in
2005 to become Maersk Line. Elder
Dempster was sold in 1989 to Delmas and Ocean Steamship Co. withdrew
from deep sea shipping. After the sale of the OCL
holding, Ocean Steamship Co. was
in possession of a large amount of cash in 1986, and this attracted an
unwelcome takeover bid from The company's name changed
twice in the
latter half of the twentieth century to reflect its changing
activities. In
1973, after the Cory takeover, it became Ocean Transport & Trading
Ltd.,
and in 1990 it adopted the Ocean Group name. The last director with a
family
connection retired in 1976, and the company's head office moved from
Liverpool
to By the early 1990s, Ocean
Group's main
business was international freight management. Its largest subsidiary,
MSAS
Cargo International, was one of the world's leading freight forwarders
and was
among the top five companies in air freight forwarding, with over 220
offices
in 30 countries. Ocean Group's other
businesses also centered on
transport. Its distribution services sector included McGregor Cory,
which
undertook contract distribution and warehousing in half a dozen
European
countries, and Panocean Storage & Transport, which specialized in
moving
and storing bulk liquids in Europe and the By this time, the company
had also built up
a stake in the environmental services industry. In the Final Years Despite its restructuring
efforts, Ocean Group's
lackluster performance of the early 1990s left it repositioning once
again.
Prompted by investor disinterest in the company, Ocean Group management
began looking
for a new leader to revamp the company. "We needed someone to reshape
the
headquarters and the operating units with a modern set of solutions,
not the
concepts of the 1950s and 1960s, which were still evident," claimed
former
chairman Peter Marshall in a 1998 Management Today article.
Management
decided on business executive John Allan, who was named CEO in 1994. Under Allan's leadership,
Ocean Group began to
shift its focus to global logistics. The strategy appeared to pay off.
In 1998,
revenues increased by nearly 20 percent over the previous year while
operating
profit grew by 32 percent. That year, the company created MSAS Global
Logistics, uniting all of its logistics businesses, including MSAS
Cargo
International, under the new name. The company was also
involved in strategic
ventures and key acquisitions during this time period. In 1996, the
company
established a joint venture in In 2000
Cory Towage was sold
to the Dutch company, Wijsmuller Group. This eventually became Switzer
as part of the A.P. Moller - Maersk Group. Then Ocean plc and NFC
plc merged in 2000 to form a major logistics group as Exel plc. In 2005
Exel PLC was taken over by DHL (a
subsidiary of Deutsche Post World Net) and now operates as DHL Exel
Supply
Chain. Thus
Alfred Holt's Ocean Group, which had started off back in 1865 as the
Ocean Steamship Company and parent company for Alfred Holt & Co.
(Blue Funnel Line), one of Britain's great shipping groups, disappeared due to
mergers and
consolidation in the shipping industry and globalisation. It is truly
the end of a glorious era. www.dhl.com Singapore Airlines www.singaporeair.com Malaysia Airlines www.malaysiaairlines.com Maersk Line www.maerskline.com Switzer www.switzer.com Delmas www.delmas.com
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