Italian shipping veteran Michele D’Amato has died.
His passing leaves the Italian shipping community mourning for the loss of a great personality of Italian shipping, said Mario Mattioli, chairman of the Italian shipowners association Confitarma.
“With Michele D’Amato passes a shipowner and a dear friend, an exponent of the history of our industry that has played an important role in Italian shipping,” Mattioli said.
D’Amato was part of the third generation of the south Italy-based shipping family that included his brothers Luigi of Fratelli D’Amato and Giuseppe of Perseveranza di Navigazione.
In 1990, Michele broke away from the family operation to establish his own company, D’Amato di Navigazione.
The company was one of a handful of Naples-based owners that played an influential role in dry bulk shipping in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
The company was run as a family operation run together with Michele’s wife Rita and children Maddelena, Gianfranca and Umberto.
D’Amato used his intuition and in-depth knowledge of the freight market for growing the company, said Mattioli.
“As the company grew, so did the prestige and role of the ‘Commandante’ Michele D’Amato on the Italian shipping scene,” he said.
The company was one of a number of Italian owners that had order for a series of bulkers at the onset of the financial crisis.
At one stage, D’Amato had around 10 bulkers including three post-panamaxes and two handysizes under construction at yards in Asia.
That resulted to a period of financial restructuring in 2009 which led to several ships being sold, including two panamaxes in 2014 and a handysize in 2016.
Since then, his daughter Maddalena has relaunched the company.
D’Amato held many technical roles and was an adviser to Italian classification society Rina, the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), and France’s Bureau Veritas.
He was awarded an honorary degree from the Parthenope University of Naples in recognition of his technical knowledge.
“We will all miss his gentle manners and elegance imbued with the totally Neapolitan spirit that accompanies his skills as a great entrepreneur and connoisseur of the maritime world,” Mattioli said.
