2020 is a year that we will probably never forget. The coronavirus crisis hit hard and impacted our business and everyday life. But let’s now look back at the year that passed and find joy in all the positive things that also happened.
Two of our mega-RoRos from Jinling will be allocated to Istanbul-Italy to cater for the extra volumes
DFDS and Ekol Logistics, a leading Turkish transport company in the market between Turkey and Europe, have today agreed to significantly expand their cooperation.
The agreement covers sea transport of trailers between Istanbul in Turkey and Trieste in Italy and DFDS expects it to increase our volumes of freight units in the Mediterranean by close to 30 %.
To accommodate those extra volumes, DFDS will expand terminal capacities.
“I am very pleased to inform that we have signed a contract for the use of a recently built RoRo terminal in Yalova southeast of Istanbul. This is a very important move to effectively reduce constraints in terminal capacity so we can ensure a more frictionless flow for our customers. Adding calls to Yalova also provides a wider geographic coverage for our many customers in and around Istanbul,” says Peder Gellert, Executive Vice President and Head of DFDS’ Shipping Division.
DFDS will also increase ships capacity by allocating further ships to this market, including two new freight ferries to be delivered from a Chinese shipyard in the early part of 2019. The ships will be the largest ever in DFDS’ fleet and offer space for 450 trailers each.
“I am really happy that we are able to extend our service to the hauliers and logistics providers trading between Turkey and the EU. We have a strong belief in the potential of this trade which links some of the world’s largest and most dynamic industrial regions, and we will continue to invest in providing an even more robust and reliable supply chain that support growth and jobs on both sides also in the future,” says Peder Gellert.
Selcuk Boztepe, Senior Vice President and Head of DFDS’ Business Unit Mediterranean, adds: “Since DFDS’ investment in the Turkish company U.N Ro-Ro in June 2018, we have already invested in lengthening of the ships to provide more capacity for our customers and in environmental equipment to adapt the fleet to new 2020 legislation. DFDS has also established a new IT development center in Istanbul adding new colleagues to DFDS in Turkey. With this new customer agreement and increased capacity in the fleet and ports, DFDS will continue to support Turkish exports and transport industries,” he says.
The Automated Quotes use case (use case is equivalent to a project) is now eight months old and we want to celebrate it with a place in the spotlight. The use case was initiated for several reasons: 1) The original quoting process is a manual and time-consuming process, 2) it is conducted differently across the business and 3) data is not collected and used to optimise the process.
As a team that loves data, the last point really hurts, which was why it was decided that a change was needed. Together with Logistics, we wanted to reduce the time-to-market for quotes, we wanted to standardise the quoting process across the entire Logistics business, while making sure that everything we do is as transparent as possible. And of course, we wanted to collect, track and measure every quote that we produce.
Enter: Automated Quotes
The idea was simple: Can we use historic data to produce automated quotes? (If you haven’t guessed it, this was where we got the name for the use case). So, what is an automated quote? Based on very little input from the user (usually a sales person), we can, by utilising AI (machine learning), estimate the different cost elements (i.e. loaded haulage cost, empty haulage cost, crossing cost) that makes up the total cost of a booking from a collection area to a delivery area. Combine this with a pre-set margin and a final sanity check from the sales person and you have yourself a very effective cocktail: An automated quote.
We started out on the Vlaardingen and Immingham corridor, where we worked closely with Perry Schalker and Sarah Holloway to make sure that we didn’t create something with no value for the business.
Did we succeed? (Hint: Yes)
Automated Quotes is now being used every day in Vlaardingen and Immingham where, on average, it is being used by eight different people creating around 50 quotes per day and around 4,100 quotes since July 2018. It has fully replaced the old way of quoting for full-loads.
Hamburg has just completed a testing period and will go live in January. We continue to scale and will shortly decide on the next office in line. Furthermore, the solution has proved to be more accurate in predicting the cost for a quote than the previous quotation tool. For example, instead of calculating the expected empty haulage for a booking as a national average, the solution automatically finds the closest 300 historical bookings and uses their actual empty haulage to estimate the empty haulage for a given quotation.
Unfortunately, without performance data from the time before Automated Quotes, it has not been possible to create a proper benchmark analysis. What we can do is to share a story from real life telling one of the changes the tool has brought:
• Previously, the good sales people in Immingham were not allowed to quote from the Netherlands to the UK without receiving confirmation from the Vlaardingen office. It went like this:
• Now, because the quoting process has been standardised and the quote amount is the same independent of who creates it, this is the process:
Sarah Holloway, UK Commercial Director, says: “The tool is fantastic! For the first time in a long time it is easy to make a quote, it takes just seconds to do and the customer has it in their inbox fast meaning our chances of success are higher at winning more business for DFDS. We now use it for tenders also which has significantly reduced our time spent so we can be more focused on the solution rather than figuring out the price.”
The next important step for us is to start utilising the data we are currently collecting for every quote made. We can soon analyse whether we always lose quotes from one region or whether it is the same customer who is always asking for quotes but never gives us any business.
Thank you to Rasmus Fisker Pedersen, Project Manager in Smart Data, for sending this very interesting story.
We have shown you a lot of great pictures taken far away of our newbuilding in Jinling. But if you are wondering what the mega ro-ros will be like on the inside, you don’t have to look any further.
Jens Peter Baltsersen, Senior Project Manager, has just sent us some excellent pictures of our first newbuilding showing parts of the ship that we have not been able to share with you before.
A little while ago, we needed your help in voting for DFDS in the World Travel Awards. We asked, you delivered! Through all your hard work, DFDS has now been named as the World’s Leading Ferry Operator for the eighth year in a row.
This win comes on top of a great year for DFDS where we have already won the accolade of Europe’s Leading Ferry Operator, which we’ve had for the last seven years.
The ceremony took place in Lisbon, Portugal, on 1 December, with Colin Fawcus, Sales Manager UK & Netherlands, and David Finnegan, Sales Manager Central, Eastern, Southern Europe, Baltics & Russia kindly collecting the award on the company’s behalf.
The awards event brings together more than 300 of the leading figureheads and VIPs from across Europe in celebration of standout hospitality and recognition of excellence in the global travel and tourism industry.
Peder Gellert, Executive Vice President & Head of Shipping said: “We are thrilled once again to be named the ‘World’s Leading Ferry Operator’ at the World Travel Awards. The awards are very special as they are decided by the public, our customers, as well as industry professionals. Thank you to everyone, on board and ashore, for your continuous dedication and hard work in providing first class service. This shows that ‘We Move for All to Grow’.”
As part of the new Digitising the Core strategy, the Business Intelligence department is rolling out the visualisation tool Tableau which enables improved decision-making based on data.
Marta Grytka, BI Business Partner, says: “We are constantly adding new data sources to the Tableau landscape. For the Shipping Division, we have just released the Freight Clarity Tableau data sources which includes three main data sources. They support analyses on the voyage and booking level, one of them being a data source with revenue on charge code level. Additionally, two supporting data sources have been included in the release to support allotment utilisation analysis and weekly volume reporting compared to the forecast.”
“The Freight Clarity project was born out of the OPUS project, in which the most important KPIs were shortlisted. Based on the above-mentioned data sources, we are now able to trace 27 OPUS KPIs, and we will continue adding new features to make sure that the solution provides maximum value to the business users and aids the daily decision-making.”
The purpose of the Freight Clarity solution is to provide self-service BI to the freight users as well as to analysts who can perform detailed analyses using the Tableau Desktop.
Iga Kotra, Tableau consultant in BI, says: “Since Tableau is a relatively new tool at DFDS, we will ensure that the end users get a thorough understanding of the available data, and we will help them create their first Tableau reports.”
Hans-Henrik Pedersen, CFO of Shipping, says: “I expect that the new improved reports will provide us with reliable details and enable us to get more complete and informative pictures of the development of our freight KPIs. The future reports will pull data from the same source, and we will look at the same numbers – no more ‘your numbers’ versus ‘my numbers’. I am very pleased to see that one of the first global KPI reports to be released following this announcement is the replacement of the Weekly Management Statistics, published each Tuesday at exactly 12.00 hours CET. I really think that the new look and feel of this report improves the flash visualisation of our freight volume development.”
As part of DFDS Logistics Oslo’s new contract with Norske Skog, DFDS has invested in a ro-ro ramp at the Norske Skog paper mill in Halden on the Oslofjord.
We have previously used sideport container vessels when serving Norske Skog. However, there are very few of these vessels left, so we decided to use ro-ro vessels suitable for paper transport instead – therefore we needed a new ramp.
The first ro-ro vessel is due to arrive on 1 January, and with support from Jesper Hartvig Nielsen, Port Captain Fleet & Chartering, and Søren Sondrup Hvalsø, Senior Category Manager procurement, we have worked hard to prepare the infrastructure for this. We considered various solutions and chose Dutch Offshore Contractors (DOC) to buy, refit and install the pontoon for us.
Once the pontoon was finally in the hands of DOC, the project ran really well, and the pontoon was delivered as agreed at the quay in Halden on 8 November. It was installed over the following days, and, on the evening of Friday 16 November, we marked the official takeover of the ramp.
Now we are ready to deliver the services we promised Norske Skog, and we look forward to seeing the ramp in action.
A huge thank you to all involved from DFDS for a great – and at times stressful – project, and not least to DOC for finalising it as planned. They have done a great job for us.
Sideport container ships to Skogn
Our two sideport container ships, Lysvik and Lysbris, will be serving the Skogn mill on Norway’s west coast.
DFDS will be servicing Halden paper mill in the Oslo Fjord with ro-ro ships and has invested in a ro-ro ramp for this. The pontoon ramp was delivered as agreed at the quay in Halden on 8 November. And in the evening of Friday 16 November, there was official takeover. In the picture are, from the left: Juul van der Meer from DOC and Kasper Svenningsen, Director Shipping Logistics, Norway.
The ramp being towed under the bridges at Svinesund Norway, the boarder between Norway and Sweden.
The newly installed ramp in place in Halden.
Kell Robdrup and Hans Nagtegaal (Director Containers Port of Rotterdam) sign the sale and purchase agreement making the neighboring Rotterdam Bulk Terminal part of our Vlaardingen terminal.
650 trailers. This is the extra number of trailers, which DFDS will be able to accommodate and handle at the Vlaardingen terminal when it adds the recently acquired Rotterdam Bulk Terminal’s 92,000 m2 to our current space.
The acquisition has been negotiated since 2016 and became reality on Monday 12 November when SVP Kell Robdrup signed the contract that moves the ownership to DFDS. “It is a huge step forward. The 60% additional capacity will enable us to introduce a far better layout of the terminal and – in combination with new digital solutions – ensure a more efficient operation that eliminates the congestion issues we have previously experienced at the busy terminal,” says Kell.
Ralph Bosveld, Terminal Director, says: “I am particularly pleased with the opportunities this gives us for developing the infrastructure with rail and barge connections and – not least – adapting our services and offers to the future (yet un-clarified) Brexit situation, which will require space for customs clearance and trailers waiting for clearance.”
The work to remove the current structures and buildings have started and the terminal expects to starts using a part of the new area in April 2019. The rest will be taken in use during May 2020.
Vlaardingen: DFDS Rotterdam terminal’s new area is marked by a red line in the picture. “This means that we can accommodate 650 additional trailers and develop a much more efficient infrastructure so we can handle Brexit and offer new services,” says Ralph Bosveld.
On November 1st, we are live with a new offering to our Shipping customers on the Channel. “Spot” customers, who used to show up at the terminal and pay for a freight crossing with cash or a credit card, can now book a simple “No Fuss” freight ticket online in just a couple of clicks.
“We set out to provide the simplest possible product for our spot customers in the fastest possible time,” says Kasper Moos, Vice President & Head of BU Channel, who has been driving the initiative from a Shipping perspective. “Before, customers could buy freight crossings online from resellers and other providers, but not directly from us. Some of these resellers are strategic partners for us, and we are not trying to compete with them, but we are trying to offer an alternative to unauthorized resellers, as well as to provide the kind of service that our customers expect from us in a digital age. I encourage anyone inside DFDS who has an urgent need to book and buy a freight trip across the Channel to get out their credit card and buy a ticket here.”
As of today, customers can buy this one simple product – a one-way ticket in either direction between Dover and Calais or Dunkerque. Sales will be carefully monitored, and other web analytics data collected to evaluate how this performs. Going forward, this data will help the team to decide how to develop the ecommerce offering – with more types of ticket, value added services and/or across more routes.
Sophie-Kim Chapman, Vice President Digital and Marketing told us, “This is exactly the kind of cooperation we want to drive more of going forwards. Rather than Digital and IT teams working on a solution with the Business at somewhat of a distance, we have been working as one cross-functional team, including commercial and operational people from BU Channel, and with a very clear shared vision of speed and simplicity for the first launch.”
Sophie-Kim Chapman and Kasper Moos
The team who delivered this new digital freight experience worked with Lean Start-up and Design Thinking methods, and co-starred Robin Sedgwick and Cheryl Hawes (BU Channel), Anne-Kathrine Kjær Christensen (Product Owner, Digital), Caroline Lehman Nelson (UX Designer, Digital), Allan Houmark (Developer, IT), Kunuk Nykjaer (Developer, IT), Tommy Sørensen (Developer, IT), Jesper Bendtsen Kirkegaard (Tester, IT) plus consultants from Trifork. The team enjoyed support from Wayne Bullen and various other members of the BU Channel team, Legal, Finance, IT Architecture and the DIO for Shipping, Sean Potter.
The propellers and shaft were fitted to our second Jinling newbuilding just last week, and they have already had their first spin, as our newbuilding was successfully launched by float-out and is now moored close to the first vessel.
Additionally, the 6,700 lane-metre vessel was painted in DFDS livery, and you can see how significant this coat is to the overall finish, compared to last week’s pictures of the newbuilding.
Seeing all the hard work come alive must be a fantastic feeling for our site team and crew in Jinling Shipyard, and we are amazed by the speed of the construction and the dedication they have all put into it.
Congratulations on a successful launch and a big thank you to Frane Pilic, Michael Klysner and Jeppe Halkjær Pedersen for the continuous flow of great pictures.
For some time, gender diversity has been on the agenda at DFDS but not much real progress has been made on the subject. Now tangible initiatives have been implemented to kickstart the process of making DFDS a more gender-diverse workplace.
A presentation to the EC by Declan Walsh, Nick Forsyth, Liv Anna Kastrup Olsen and Karen Baurdoux from the Horizon talent programme 2018 really got things moving. After being selected as the winning group for their pitch on gender diversity, they were also invited to lead a workshop at the recent management conference.
Why is gender diversity important?
Karen Baurdoux says: “Lots of research conducted by organisations such as Forbes, BCG and McKinsey clearly show that there is a direct link between business performance and gender diversity. Companies with an above-average gender-diverse management team achieve various significant results, such as increased innovation, a wider talent pool, workplace happiness and improved decision-making. All this lead to better business performance, and companies where 30% of all leaders are female could add up to 6 percentage points to their net profit.”
At DFDS, we are not there yet. Women make up 27% of DFDS in total. Among the VPs, only 12% are female, and among employees reporting to VPs, 21% are female.
Why are women under-represented in management teams?
Liv Anna Kastrup Olsen says: “There are of course a lot of reasons for lack of gender diversity but one thing we cannot neglect is the impact of unconscious bias. Without wanting to do so, we make assumptions unconsciously about the people we meet, their appearance, age, gender, etc. One unconscious bias is called ‘the mini-me effect’ – ‘she looks like me, so I like her’. The good thing is that unconscious bias training can help make people aware so that they may avoid the temptation of hiring and promoting employees who look, speak and think the same way.”
Next step – the initiatives to make DFDS more gender-diverse
Karen says: “We know that we have a long way to go but thanks to the very valuable input from the participants at the workshop, we have a good starting point. We will continue to focus on the subject, and Henrik Holck in People & Ships will have ownership of gender diversity going forward. A core committee headed by Kasper Damgaard has been set up to ensure ongoing progress. It consists of representatives from Group HR, Operations, Horizon and CSR. The gender diversity project is aligned with the new CRS strategy headed by Sofie Hebeltoft.”
Several initiatives are already being implemented, such as the inclusion of gender diversity in corporate training programmes, future VP sessions and the onboarding programme, as well as initiatives related to the recruitment process. This will undoubtedly reduce unconscious bias and raise awareness about gender diversity.
Niels Smedegaard says: “The entire Executive Committee agrees on the importance of putting gender diversity on the agenda and actively do things to make DFDS a more gender-diverse company. We fully support the work of the core committee and hope you all will too. To make this a success, your help is also needed, so please do not hesitate to contact the core committee with any relevant suggestions, ideas and feedback.”
To contact the core committee, please contact Liv Olsen or Karen Baurdoux.
Finally, if you did not read this article already, do take the time to read this encouraging piece about Şima Demir, the first female master in the DFDS fleet.
The core committee
Gender diversity initiatives at DFDS
The Manager of the Year is a special award for managers, who recognise excellent and outstanding leadership. And earlier this week, this year’s winner was announced by Niels Smedegaard at the Management conference. During the conference, three teaser videos were shown to give participants a chance to guess the winner. This year’s winner is Pernille Hüls Dyrmose. See if you can recognise her in the teaser videos here:
See the speech by Niels Smedegaard where he announces the Manager of the Year 2018, Pernille Hüls Dyrmose, who was very surprised and happy:
Warm congratulations to Pernille and her team for winning the award. The prize is 5,000 Euros to spend on an experience for the department.
Şima Demir has been promoted to the position of master, the first female master in the history of both BU Med and the former UN Ro-Ro. Actually, according to informed sources, the first female master in the entire DFDS!
Moreover, BU Med currently employs 14 female officers in deck and engine jobs.
Şima graduated from the Department of Maritime Transportation and Management Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and started her career on a chemical tanker in 2007.
Her path crossed BU Med in 2014 when she first started as a deck officer. Within a year, she had been promoted to chief officer and now, in the fourth year of her BU Med career, she has successfully completed all assessments and became a master.
Şima says: “It makes me proud to work in a company that supports young women in their careers. It enables me to pursue my dream job, and I am very much looking forward to my new role as master on board my ship. I am fully aware of the great responsibility.”
Peder Gellert, EVP of Shipping, says: “I want to congratulate Şima in her new position. It makes me extremely happy that now DFDS can proudly say that gender diversity is being taken seriously. I hope for many more female masters on our ships in the years to come. We know that at our terminals, our many female drivers are often outcompeting their male colleagues e.g. when it comes to quality and precision – I am sure the same goes for steering our ships from port to port.”
Şima has started her career as master on UND EGE. The vessel has capacity for 207 trailers and is 193 metres long. It is one of the 12 BU Med vessels which are currently operating in the Mediterranean Sea between Turkey, Italy, Greece and France.
Today is a day of celebration. Our colleagues in Logistics have just been awarded a major long-term contract as the new logistics provider for the UK business of the global frozen food supplier Birds Eye, which is part of Nomad Foods Europe Ltd.
“With this contract, we will manage Birds Eye’s UK distribution network and imports from continental Europe to the UK distribution centre from 1 December 2018. And to be able to handle this major business, I am very happy to announce, that we will be welcoming several new colleagues in the administration and in the operations team,” says Matt O’Dell, Managing Director, Peterborough & Grimsby.
About 40 new colleagues will be transferred from DHL, where they are currently working with Birds Eye services. “This way we will retain the knowledge and experience, which is a great advantage for us and for Birds Eye,” Matt adds.
The preparations for the transition of the Birds Eye services from DHL to DFDS is being managed by Scott Mullen and Matt O’Dell. Much of the set-up is already in place, with cross-functional teams deployed to ensure that we are well prepared for the transition and that we can continue to deliver an uninterrupted service during the handover.
New office in Coventry
“Apart from our new colleagues, the new contract also means several other additions. We will add new trailer equipment to our trailer pool and open a new office in Coventry. We want to ensure a close and valuable collaboration with Birds Eye, so we will be present at the company’s production site in Lowestoft and in a cold store, which is operated by an external cold store provider,” says Scott Mullen, Regional General Manager in Peterborough.
“We can all be proud that we have been selected as the logistics provider for Birds Eye. This has been possible because of the high-quality work by Matt O’Dell and the team in Peterborough and the very professional response to Birds Eye’s tender,” says Eddie Green, EVP of Logistics.
Birds Eye is behind well-known frozen foods, such as peas and fish fingers, and if their packaging below is anything to go by, then DFDS seems to be a suitable partner.
We will keep you informed about the developments, as soon as we are able to provide more detailed information about the transition.
It was at full throttle when our colleagues from Poland celebrated DFDS Polska’s 5-year anniversary.
As the video below shows, smiles and happy faces were all around on a day that had all the makings of a perfect 5-year birthday, including gifts (a DFDS polo shirt), a custom made DFDS cake and even a scavenger hunt in the woods with varieties of challenges.
“This milestone is the culmination of five years of hard work, which is why we began with a Town Hall acknowledging our colleagues who have been with us since the very beginning and contributed to making DFDS Polska the success it is today” says Managing Director of DFDS Polska, Radek Mierzejewski.
“It is not very often that we get to enjoy a whole day with each other outside of the work environment, so it was fantastic to see everyone having fun, laughing and celebrating together while enjoying the weather on the outskirts of Poznan.”
The eventful day was concluded with a barbecue and chance to show off some great dance moves to the colleagues. Everyone could have a drink to enjoy and celebrate the end of a great day together.
“Days like these are very important, because they contribute to stronger relations across the whole of DFDS Polska, making us more integrated and a true one team. Finally, I want to thank everyone involved for making the day a success and not least for their hard work over the past five years,” Radek says.
If you want to get a quick look at the celebrations, feel free to watch this video showing footage of our happy colleagues throughout the day.
Update 21:25 CET: Shortly after 10 pm local time, Regina Seaways arrived safely in Klaipeda where she is being discharged and where passengers can now continue their journey.
UPDATE 16:45 CET: Regina Seaways is now sailing under its own power and is heading towards Klaipeda. Estimated time of arrival in Klaipeda is around 22:00-23:00 local time.
Approx. at 13:00, DFDS ferry Regina Seaways suffered a breakdown to the main engine en route from Kiel to Klaipeda. The breakdown caused smoke which triggered the ship’s extinguishing system in the engine room.
No passengers or crew members were injured. The ship has 294 passengers, 41 crew members as well as trucks and cars on board.
In line with the procedures, the passengers were assembled at muster stations in preparation for a possible evacuation. However, evacuation will not be necessary as the situation is under control and no heat development has been detected in the engine room.
The extent of the damage is not yet fully known, and it is not yet clear whether the ship can continue under its own power or by tugboat assistance.
Regina Seaways is a ro-pax ferry, flying the Lithuanian flag. The ship was built in 2010 and carries up to 500 passengers and has 2623 lane metres.
For further information, please contact VP Group Communications, Gert Jakobsen: +45 24400043
Following a rather slow summer, a healthy economic development in the EU and growing trade have caused cargo volumes on DFDS’ routes from Klaipeda to Karlshamn and Kiel to increase.
“This is putting extraordinary pressure on capacity, and we have long waiting lists on some peak departures. Therefore, we and our customers have strong wishes for more capacity and have decided to charter in MaestroUniverse as an additional vessel from 6 October,” says Anders Refsgaard, VP and head of BU Baltic.
Maestro offers capacity for 160 trailers. She will be performing one weekly roundtrip on Klaipeda-Kiel and one on Klaipeda-Karlshamn, starting in Kiel. “I am very pleased with this as it enables us to provide the transport capacity and flexibility, which our customers need and require, and helps us bring down waiting times substantially,” says Anders.
“The charter period for maestro will end shortly before Christmas when the peak period usually ends,” he says.
With Maestro in service, DFDS will be offering up to 11 weekly departures in each direction on Klaipeda-Karlshamn and 9 on Klaipeda-Kiel.
As part of the vision to continuously develop and improve their support for the business, Group Procurement spent two full days this week on a training course with Scanmarket, a key provider of eSourcing tools.
eSourcing comprises eRFx (eRequest for information/quotation/proposal) and eAuctions, which are an efficient, online negotiation process that creates transparency and compliance.
eSourcing is not new at DFDS. We started using the eSourcing platform Scanmarket in 2014, but until now, we have only used this way of buying and making tenders on an ad hoc basis. All this is about to change.
Breda Čok, Project Leader on this project, explains: “eAuctions are growing, and many big companies such as Mærsk and Novo Nordisk have been using this way of purchasing for many years realising savings that they wouldn’t otherwise have achieved. We have been lucky enough to talk to these companies and learn from them, which we can now utilise for our strategy execution and the roll-out at DFDS.”
With time Group Procurement expects that the eSourcing platform will enable them to become more responsive to business requirements. The administrative work will be much easier as a result of automation and a more structured approach and they will offer a greater transparency to their key stakeholders and to suppliers.
Valdemar Warburg, Group Transformation Officer, says: “This will be an ongoing project which is critical to our long-term strategy of digitising our core processes and to ensure efficiency throughout the group. In order for this to succeed, we will need full engagement and support from our stakeholders.”
The official kick-off date will be on 1 October, however use of eSourcing will gradually be extended as the team and stakeholders undergo training in how to use the system.
The Category Managers in Group Procurement will be responsible for informing their stakeholders about the new tool and how it can best be utilised in each category. If you would like to learn more about eSourcing and how this could benefit your business, feel free to contact any of the Category Managers in Group Procurement.
During the integration meeting in Istanbul on 12 September, Niels Smedegaard presented the award plate to Operation Superintendent Hasan Göler for his winning suggestion of using Turkish UNESCO world heritage sites as new names for our 12 Turkish-flagged vessels.
Classical, beautiful, a bull’s eye. You can almost sense the breath of history in the names suggested by Operation Superintendent Hasan Göler, BU Mediterranean, who won a competition among all our Turkish colleagues for the new names for our 12 Turkish-flagged vessels.
It was impressive that 107 colleagues participated with 1,761 suggested names in a competition launched by Peder Gellert and Selçuk Boztepe. However, beating the suggestion from Hasan Göler that we name the ships after some of the UNESCO world heritage sites, which Turkey has in abundance, was impossible, even though Chief Officer Serkan Akçin and Chief Officer Ömür Aydoğan also had great suggestions.
“To ensure maximum influence and agreement, we asked staff to prioritise the suggestions, and the result was very much the same as the committee’s choice,” says Peder Gellert, EP and Head of the Shipping Division.
“Ships are unique and should have unique names. They are also truly international, so what could be more appropriate than to use names that not only Turkey, but the whole Mediterranean and indeed most of the world, are familiar with and consider to be linked to their own historic and mythical heritage? The suggestion also fits perfectly with our ambition of using local and geographical names in connection with Seaways,” says Peder Gellert.
“We were not able to give UN Karadeniz its new name during its recent time in dock as we did not have sufficient time for the approval by the maritime authorities. However, we can inform you that the vessel CEMIL BAYULGEN will be named EPHESUS SEAWAYS in connection with her lengthening and scrubber installation in December.”
The list of names suggested by Hasan Göler and to be used along with Seaways includes: Troy, Cappadocia, Olympos, Assos, Artemis, Aspendos, Dardanelles, Zeugma, Sumela, Myra and Pergamon.
“Located within what was once the estuary of the River Kaystros, Ephesus comprises successive Hellenistic and Roman settlements founded in new locations which followed the coastline as it retreated westward. Excavations have revealed grand monuments of the Roman Imperial period including the Library of Celsus and the Great Theatre. The Ancient City of Ephesus is an outstanding example of a Roman port city, with sea channel and harbour basin.”
Carlos Viñas White, BI Developer, Patricia Martinez, BI Developer and Andreas Egelund Lomholdt, BI Business Partner
A new equipment cube for Logistics has just been released. The tool is a new addition to the Velocity BI reporting functions and offers much better possibilities for tracking and analysing the utilisation and costs of trailers and containers than the old tools.
Yasmin Lenz, Project Manager in the Logistics Division, explains: “The cube makes it possible for every office to drill down on the trip days and equipment costs by many different factors including traffic, customer and equipment type.”
The way of measuring trip days, the duration from when an item is picked up until delivery, will be more accurate. In addition, a full overview of the fleet including the ownership, last operational status and empty/loaded status is easily accessible via the cube. The data is refreshed every night.
The new equipment cube was developed as a collaboration between teams from Divisional Finance Logistics, the European Equipment Pool in Immingham and the Business Intelligence department.
“I want to thank EEP and the BI team for great cooperation. This will be a significant gain for all the users around the network allowing operational optimisation and thus reducing costs,” says Yasmin.
For any questions please contact BI support.
While companies are going more and more digital, the demand for IT developers is increasing rapidly. It is a general trend which has resulted in a massive shortage of IT developers across Europe. This is also a challenge for DFDS, where we recently reported on a campaign to recruit IT developers. With the acquisition of UN Ro-Ro (now BU Med), we now have a strong presence in Istanbul, which makes it easier and accessible to get in contact with the highly esteemed universities in the area.
And as an addition to our current IT department in Copenhagen, we are now setting up a development centre in Istanbul, which will initially consist of three teams, each with six members. Recruitment and the search for a suitable location has started, and we expect that the centre will be operational by mid-December 2018.
What happens to the current IT operations in BU Med?
The current IT operations in BU Med will gradually be merged into the DFDS IT set-up, both regarding IT infrastructure and IT systems. To facilitate that, the BU Med IT department has also been merged into DFDS Group IT, as a separate department.
Both the development centre and the current IT organisation in Turkey will be managed by Senior Director Jan B Devrim, former VP of sales at BU Med. He has a background in IT development and management, so he brings a lot of experience from both the business and IT into the job. Jan will report to CIO Gert Møller, with a dotted line to SVP Selçuk Boztepe on local IT matters.
To be prepared for the global sulphur limit, BU Mediterranean has been working hard to find the optimal solution to the legislation that takes effect from January 2020.
“Over the last two years BU Mediterranean has considered all available options to reduce sulphur oxide from our ships, including the latest developments in pollution-control technology. In combination with DFDS’ know-how and expertise from previous scrubber installations we have decided to continue with in-line hybrid scrubber technology,” says Selçuk Boztepe.
Peder Gellert says: “This scrubber installation will be the 19th on our DFDS vessels, and the ship Cemil Bayülgen will be the first U.N. Ro-Ro ship to have a scrubber installed. It is scheduled for the end of the year and will coincide with the ships lengthening project.”
Both the scrubber installation and lengthening project are something that we look forward keeping you updated on.
We have some fantastic news about the progress of our new mega-ships being constructed in Jinling. Senior Project Manager Jens Peter Baltsersen has reported that the first Jinling vessel was launched into the Yangtze River on 16 July.
Before launching, the vessels top coat was applied as shown on the picture, which made it look like a real DFDS vessel.
Launching such a giant vessel is quite a challenge and it takes a lot of preparation to float-out a ship of this size.
When the launch is initiated, sluice gates begins to fill the drydock with water. Once the drydock is completely full, tugboats starts to escort the vessel out in open water and as you can see on the pictures she looks magnificent sailing on her own especially in DFDS uniform.
Congratulations to the site team on a successful launch and thank you to Jeppe Halkjær Pedersen for the outstanding pictures.
Take a look at the successful launching process in the gallery below.
As a listed company, DFDS is required to report on corporate social responsibility (CSR). During the last years we have seen increasing demands and expectations regarding CSR and therefore we now want to focus more on this with a new CSR department under Group Transformation.
From 1 September, the CSR department will consist of:
Sofie Hebeltoft, Head of CSR
Sofie was employed in August 2017 in the Transformation Office, now Strategy & Consulting, where she has worked on major change projects such as the extensive restructuring of BU Group Passenger and Project Starlight. In addition, she was the project manager for the CSR report for 2017 and has also been one of the driving forces in developing a new CSR strategy for DFDS. Sofie reports to the VP in Group Transformation, Valdemar Warburg.
Poul Woodall, Director of Environment, CSR
Poul Woodall has been with DFDS since 2010, the past five years with responsibility for environmental issues. In this respect he is among other things active in Interferry’s policy committee, various EU working groups under ESSF as well as the DFDS representative in Green Ship of the Future and the Trident Alliance.
Poul reports to Sofie Hebeltoft.
“It is crucial for our clients, investors and employees that we, as a large modern company, live up to and take responsibility for the society in which we play a part. We can do that best with dedicated focus on the environment, sustainability and our employees well-being,” says Niels Smedegaard, CEO.
“In order to ensure that all divisions are involved in the CSR work, we will re-introduce the CSR Committee. This comprises of the Executive Committee and Vice Presidents within HR, Investor Relations, Group Communications, Technical Organisation, Group Transformation. The CSR department will meet with the committee on a quarterly basis to present new initiatives and report progress on on-going projects. In addition, we are introducing the concept of a CSR driver – a dedicated person from the business who will be responsible for implementing and embedding our different CSR initiatives” says Sofie.
The new CSR strategy will be presented to the Board in mid-August, and we will then tell you more about the future plans.
“This new structure will clearly strengthen the way we work with CSR in the future,” says Henrik Holck, EVP for People & Ships. “It will also apply to areas such as new talent recruitment but also very much about retaining employees. An important ethical theme for DFDS and wider society of course is ensuring we have the correct composition of employees and that they enjoy working for DFDS. We will be focussing on that a lot in the near future.”