Not just the shipyards: Inchcape cashes in on Korea's maritime surge

[INTERVIEW]

As Korea racks up shipbuilding orders at a record pace, it is not only the shipyards that are making a profit off the maritime boom.

Inchcape Shipping Services, a 180-year-old British port agency that holds both a U.S. Navy husbandry contract and a NATO submarine support contract, is seeing its Korea business grow in step with the rising number of foreign naval vessels calling at its ports and shipyards.

Nicolas Wauters, vice president of government services at Inchcape, named Korea as one of the company's top five growth markets among the 60 countries in which it operates. In a recent interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily, he pointed to the country's double-digit on-year growth, driven by nations worldwide accelerating defense spending and shipbuilding activity.

"Korea is becoming the epicenter for many of our clients," Wauters said. "Korea promotes itself very effectively — and that helps us as an organization, especially in the government services sector. It signals to the world: 'We have the capacity, we have the willingness.' So that helps us. We try to focus on key countries where we see growth, and Korea is definitely one of those."

Inchcape has nearly doubled its Korea headcount to 20 in recent years, and last November opened a third office in Geoje, South Gyeongsang — home to Hanwha Ocean and Samsung Heavy Industries, two of the world's largest shipyards — adding to existing offices in Seoul and Busan.

The expansion tracks rising demand for Inchcape's services, as Hanwha Ocean's growing intake of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) orders from the United States, Britain and Canada brings more foreign naval vessels through Geoje and Busan.

Geoje also serves as Inchcape's hub for offshore work. The port agency has overseen the departure of drillships, floating production storage and offloading, or FPSO, vessels and offshore wind installation ships from Korea to destinations including Brazil and Rotterdam.

The naval side of the business has been equally busy. Inchcape's government services division acts as the ground crew for foreign navies operating in Korea, handling port calls across the full range of naval operations — from refueling warships and crew changes to liaising with port authorities and providing support inside restricted shipyard zones.

The pace of that work has picked up considerably, and Wauters is direct about the reason.

"If you look at the Indo-Pacific as a region — and that includes Korea — there's definitely an increase in naval activities and naval exercises," he said. "Nations are participating in increasingly complex naval operations. We see an increase in exercises, whether on land or at sea, and those require additional support from us as well. Not just naval, but military exercises in general."

Outside government services, Inchcape covers five other sectors: tanker and dry bulk shipping, handling port calls for cargo and commodity vessels; liner and cruise, serving container shipping lines and passenger ships; and offshore energy, managing logistics for oil and gas projects.

Looking further out, Wauters is also tracking how a shifting geopolitical landscape may redraw global shipping lanes. With the Iran conflict remaining volatile and trade flows in flux, he believes the maritime industry may be heading toward a new chokepoint — though he stopped short of naming one.

"The landscape will change for sure," he said. "It is for us to understand what the real changes will be and advise our customers accordingly in terms of what will be the new Strait of Hormuz, the new regulations. It will be a combination of the usual routes and potentially new ones that customers will opt for."

BY LEE JAE-LIM [[email protected]]