Participants in this year’s Clarksons dry cargo shipping diploma week were set an unusual challenge.
Organisers of the event for early-career professionals working for the brokerage and its clients had to present a Dragons’ Den-style business proposal.
Five groups pitched a six-ship deployment strategy based on their understanding of the outlook for the physical and forward freight agreement (FFA) markets.
This year’s winner was the Rhino Bulk team, which delivered “a persuasive and well-reasoned business strategy, underpinned by a detailed financial analysis”, Clarksons said.
The four “dragons”, or judges, were Clarksons panamax division director Elliot Cole, dry bulk analyst Luke Ravenscroft, secondhand sale-and-purchase division director Fred Engelbach and course leader Alex Gray.
The event, also known as the Jon Marshall Lectures, was held at Commodity Quay in London and attended by a record 29 participants.
Clarksons contributed 11 of these. The rest were client representatives from London, as well as those who travelled from Denmark, Greece, Hamburg, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore and the US.
The highly regarded programme, focused on the global dry cargo shipping industry, covers a variety of areas including commercial, legal, financial, regulatory, operational and technical.
Gray spent his early career as a Clarksons dry cargo chartering broker before helping to establish the company’s pioneering presence in the FFA market.
Chartering race
The five groups also competed in a simulated chartering game, in which they raced to fix three cargoes.
“It’s an integral part of the dry cargo course, which was updated this year to place greater emphasis on the importance of each of the teams working out the competitive landscape at the start of the game, plus the introduction of an additional cargo to the mix during the later stages,” Clarksons said.
The Rob Byrne memorial prize for the best participant in the FFA exercise was won by Viktor Kosturkov of Cobelfret.
The Jon Marshall Trophy, awarded to the best course participant, was claimed by William Morris of Oldendorff Carriers.
