The vision of… Jan Koopmans

Central Industry Group (CIG), headquartered in Groningen in the north of the Netherlands, developed from a local supplier of steel packages to shipyards into a total solutions provider of complete vessels (engineering, build, steel building kits). CIG has 700 employees in the Netherlands and Germany and another 500 in Poland and China.

The company consists of several subsidiaries, specialised in ship design software (Numeriek Centrum Groningen), design and engineering (Vuyk Engineering Groningen), the production of aluminum and steel building kits (Centraalstaal, Ostseestaal, Staal Bewerking Noord), shipbuilding products (Shipkits), piping products (Shippipe Bremen) and container lashing, winches and anchors (Ship’s Equipment Centre Bremen and Groningen).

Since 1996, Jan Koopmans has been working for CIG, of which the last ten years have been in the function of CEO: ”Up until now, our group consisted of several companies, all with their own profile to the outside world, all part of the financial holding CIG. Now, we decided to brand our company as CIG, and also rename our companies with CIG integrated in the name, for example CIG Shipbuilding, CIG Centraalstaal or CIG Maritime Technology. Our ambition is to make CIG as strong a brand as Damen or IHC Merwede, the brand CIG should be internationally recognised.”

Change of scope

”We want to profile CIG and integrate in niche markets: realising small, specific vessels with the synergy of all our subsidiaries”, Koopmans continues. ”A ship owner is not interested in a steel package, but wants to buy a complete vessel, therefore we changed our scope. Our focus does not lie only on dry bulk anymore, but also on other industries, like offshore and offshore wind, and for that we are looking for strong partners. CIG also delivers services and products to the super yacht industry. By changing our scope, we can add more value to our customers and as such have become a world player. We do business directly with small and medium ship owners and focus mainly on special vessels. A challenge we currently face is the fact that smaller ship owners have financing problems. We want to make sure that those ship owners get help to receive the financing and therefore want to be able to offer a complete package to service the ship owner from the beginning to the end. These are the biggest developments of the past years.”

No 2 MbH Maart 2014 voor website.jpg 18 2”As a varied group, we did not have any problems regarding the crisis. It helped that we made strategic choices in time, otherwise we would have struggled, for sure. Only with our steel building kits sold in the north of the Netherlands, we would not have made it. Now we have a solid starting point for the future and I see a lot of opportunities in the years to come. The tanker market might be interesting for us and I expect the inland shipping industry to recover at some point, therefore I foresee a moderate growth of the group’s activities and turnover.”

Going international

CIG expanded its horizon by looking outside the north of the Netherlands, Koopmans explains: ”Our group is internationally active: we have companies in Germany and China, partner yards in Poland that exclusively build for us, and customers and agents in 44 countries. Western Europe, Scandinavia and South America are our main focus. We look at the international developments in the market and want to efficiently adapt to that. I invested extensively in our sales network, so we can be active in the markets where a lot is happening. This will be the plan for the coming three years. The shipbuilding industry is a method to produce steel, our goal is to fill our factories with steel and our core business is ship building kits, cascos and complete vessels. We have two steel companies, one in Groningen and one in the German town of Stralsund. In total we are able to produce 100,000 tons of steel per year.”

CIGs portfolio is varied: recent projects include building of complete cascos for trailing suction hopper dredgers for a big Dutch dredging companies, building complete vessels for ship owners in the North of the Netherlands, building offshore cascos for Norwegian shipyards. “Next to that we are in talks with two Nigerian ship owners for offshore supply vessels and we are in the process of delivering building kits for navy vessels to the Malaysian government”, Koopmans proudly says. “Of course we also still deliver our building kits to a stable group of Dutch yards, our domestic market stays important and is our core business. I am proud of every project we did so far. Extra special were the first complete vessels we built, but also our first projects in Norway and Asia. We are not the cheapest, but certainly the best in what we do, and I am proud of that. The combination of service and our building kits make the difference.”

Trends

”I do not see any significant improvement of the dry bulk market for the coming two years, overcapacity will remain, the rise of the rates will be insufficient and the financing problems will remain as well. I predict a strong increase in the offshore industry, oil and gas as well as offshore wind. The past years a lot of specific offshore wind vessels have been built, this trend will persist and a lot will be invested in this industry. Next to that, the search for oil and gas will continue, which means offshore vessels will continue to be popular, at least for the next three years, in African as well as Northern European and South American countries. Russia has a big market as well, but it is a difficult market to get into. Our software subsidiary has a branch in St. Petersburg and we try to get access to the Russian market via this branch to be able to sell our steel.”

No 2 MbH Maart 2014 voor website.jpg 18 3Sustainability also is a topic that is high on CIG’s agenda, according to Koopmans: ”You cannot shy away from sustainability, as the natural resources diminish there are decisions made regarding sustainability in Brussels that we have to comply to. Our engineering bureau CIG Maritime Technology recently developed a new type of vessel, a 6,000 dwt ship that is aimed at sustainable shipping. With its DP system it is also suitable for the installation of offshore windmills and we are able to reduce the daily costs. Our aim is to develop specific vessels and realise a portfolio, that we can take to the market, we do not want to build standard vessels only. To distinguish yourself is of the utmost importance, as a shipbuilder as well as a ship owner, and I see that beautiful projects originate from cooperation. Within our company, we mainly use a lot of energy in our production facilities, mainly our cutting machines. We try to reduce this and also recycle materials to be able to use the steel better and more efficiently. Investing in showing the group’s green image to the outside world is important to me, I attach a lot of value to that, as do many of our clients. Just take oil companies as an example: they are very interested in sustainability and also look at the production facilities of their suppliers. Having our attention drawn to this makes us value sustainability even more. The past two years I noticed that there is a lot to win in the field of efficiency.”

The employees of CIG can be roughly divided in three types, says Koopmans: ”Firstly, commercial people with knowledge of the market, who are difficult to find in the north of the Netherlands. Secondly, technically skilled people, who, unlike other maritime companies, are not too difficult to find for us. I think that we have an advantage as we not only have good relationships with Delft University of Technology and the polytechnic school NHL, but also because the possibilities in the north of the Netherlands for working for a big company with international opportunities are limited. Last but not least we employ the people working in the factory bending the steel with 3D techniques. It costs three years to learn the trade on the job, there is no study for that. I would like the lower technical school to come back into our schooling system. This is the perfect education for people who have difficulties with the theoretical part of a study. In my opinion not having such a school anymore is a danger for the Netherlands. Young people hardly know what kind of schooling possibilities there are anymore, there are too many possibilities for a twelve, 13 year old kid to choose from. These factory jobs are not very attractive to the younger generation in the Netherlands, unfortunately, and therefore it is important to continue to invest in your people, as this problem will only grow in the future, as will the problem to find talented project managers, as being technically and financially responsible turns out to be a difficult combination. And I would love to have more project managers in my company, as our projects become more and more complex and therefore I am in need of more experienced project managers.”

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Female managers

”What I would like as well is more women in our company in management positions. Somehow that does not really work out, maybe because our industry is typically male. As a group, we have requirements for our personnel, we fish however in the same pond as our competitors in the Western part of the Netherlands and it is difficult to get employees to Groningen, as it seems very far away to Westerners, while we have so much to offer here.”

Gail van den Hanenberg