Sturrock

Sturrock Shipping Angola

Getting started in Angola has been a demanding, often frustrating and lengthy process with Sturrock Shipping (Angola) Limitada finally opening "in all respects" in September 2010. Our Country Head office being located in the heart of the city of Luanda in an area called Maianga.

Human resources is just one of the many obstacles faced by our country manager Hussein Farhat. In a country that endured decades of civil war, education suffered considerably and as a result identifying suitably qualified individuals with the requisite experience and motivation presents challenges. We are therefore extremely pleased to have secured the services of Amado Faustino who heads operations in our ships agency department and Mario Almeida in the Finance department, both of whom came onboard recently.

Luanda is the National head office for our operations in Angola with branches set to open in the ports of Cabinda, Soyo, Lobito and Namibe shortly. Angola, a relatively new producer, has been steadily increasing oil export volumes in collaboration with various Global Oil majors and is fast becoming a major international source of Crude Oil with daily production now rivalling (and on occasion exceeding) that of Nigeria.

Sturrock Shipping has represented several Oil Majors as well as many of the largest tanker owners/operators in the World for many years. Our well known tanker expertise coupled with an offshore attendance track record in South and East Africa stretching back more than three decades, were among the major drivers behind our decision to expand Westwards and invest in Angola.

We have proudly attended to oil tankers in South Africa for Angolan Oil Major Sonangol for many years. To have extended this relationship to encompass agency attendance to time-chartered storage tankers for this esteemed company in their home country is a great honour for us and brings us great pleasure.

Another area where our expertise has led to further opportunities is that of crew assistance. Not only the standard agency services for on and off signing crew, but a new specialized division offering comprehensive management of the documentation and logistics requirements for Angolan cadets involved in training programmes with foreign shipping companies. Compliance with local as well as international statutory and regulatory legislation presents a complex and challenging set of requirements for those companies who have committed to assisting with the training and upskilling of Angolan Nationals.

Although we have similar experience with cadet selection, etc in Cape Town, this is a new field for Sturrock in West Africa and Hussein and his staff have had to develop systems for these operations, most from scratch. This has been so successful that our Principals who initially indicated that we would handle 6 crew cadets, had within the first 2 months increased this figure to well over 50 and climbing! Sturrock Shipping is proud to be partnering with these industry leaders as well as the training institutions involved and we look forward to navigating these newly charted waters together to achieve their vision.

Those of us who have had the opportunity to travel into Angola can only too well appreciate the amount of work which goes into overcoming the many hurdles which present themselves. Opening an office in Luanda has been a challenge with frequent power cuts, internet crashes, lack of communications, a foreign language to be conquered and then to top it all Luanda has the somewhat dubious honour of being one of the most expensive cities in the world. Not something one usually associates with a developing country. When Luanda was established as a modern city the town planners had in mind a population of 700'000, but today some 7 million people call it home. As can be imagined with over population of this magnitude the challenges are plentiful such as the 5 hour traffic jams simply to get from one side of the city to the other.

These challenges are being met with infrastructure being built and modernised, and the ports productivity improving drastically - vessels waiting time outside the port declining from 60 / 90 days now down to only a couple of days.

Sturrock Shipping has entered the Angolan Ships agency market at what we consider to be an opportune moment in the country's development. The Oil industry is growing steadily, there has been increased FDI, particularly from the BRIC nations, infrastructure investment is running apace with economic growth, improvement in agricultural and mineral output as well as rehabilitation of the requisite rail and transport structures are set to return these sectors to profitability and we look forward to participating in this growth and indeed to achieving and exceeding the ambitious goals that we have set for ourselves in this exciting country.

For further information, please contact Sturrock Shipping Angola on +244 22 233 6877 or email agency.luanda@sturrockshipping.com.