Bjørn Hammer joined Odfjell straight from business school in 2007 and started his career as a Chartering Trainee. He has held different positions in Odfjell Tankers through the years, and in January he stepped up for the position as Global Head of Tanker Trading.
Can you share with us your Odfjell story?
“I started in the fall of 2007 as a Chartering Trainee in the Middle East department. I was a Trainee for a year or so and continued as from 2007 to 2009. When we decided to move the control of our European fleet to Bergen following the dissolvement of the Ahrenkiel JV, I was moved to the Europe desk during the fall of 2009.
In 2011 I moved to the Far East desk, and later transferred to Houston doing the same job in the fall of 2011. From 2011 to 2016 I stayed in various chartering functions, mainly doing Far East chartering.
Then the opportunity came to become Vice President of Tonnage Procurement. I got that position in the spring of 2016, so we moved back to Bergen. I held that position for a year and a half, until the reorganization of Odfjell Tankers in January this year when I was appointed Global Head of Tanker Trading – while also doing tonnage procurement.”
“It's been a good career, and Odfjell has been a good place to develop. I have been given a lot of good opportunities both in Bergen and Houston.”
What do you consider to be the highlights of your career?
“Back in Houston, I think my main achievement was how we really re-established the Odfjell Houston office. Since the anti-trust case in 2003, the Houston office was not supposed to speak to the brokering community and it was to a large extent controlled from Bergen.
When the decision to reopen the Houston office was made, we expanded it with more brokers. We also did some very important changes in the way we traded. I was very pleased with that when I left, as I think that, together with my colleagues, I was a contributing factor in making the Houston office a very strong commercial office.
“The real highlight from my career dates back to two years ago when we did the CTG and Sinochem transactions. These are two sizeable transactions – transactions that I believe will be extremely profitable and beneficial to the company in the future. If you combine these transactions with the newbuildings and all the other things that we have done, I think we have made a strong foundation for growth and profitability in the near future.”
”I believe we have done really good deals, and I am proud to have been a part of making those agreements as well as everything we have done on the tonnage side in the past two years.”
As Global Head of Tanker Trading, what will be your highest priorities in the near future?
“We have put our customer commitment on the agenda as part of Compass 2.0. My main task is to put that part into action. The first order on the agenda is to build a strong commercial strategy so that everyone who works in Odfjell Tankers is fully aware of the direction we're going and how they play a part in the commercial strategy. This is not a job that can be done just once; it is something that we need to do and live by every day.
Another important part of our strategy is to grow our business: we want to grow our top line and we want to grow our fleet. It may sound easy but it isn't, because at any time when the market is as weak as it is today, we can buy more ships. But more importantly, we need to have sound and healthy growth to ensure that we have a good contract coverage for the ships.
“It is very important that we grow in a sustainable way and at a sustainable rate.”
“The short-term goal involves IMO 2020, which can be a great threat, but which also can be a good opportunity. We believe that we have the most fuel-efficient fleet, so our competitive advantage would likely increase substantially as we move into 2020.
It is important to make sure that we get that right, that we really understand the consequences, and that we really use and play on our strength in a scenario where the fuel prices become more important. We also need to use our competitive advantage to win new market shares, and make sure that we're not taken advantage of by clients who try to get away with putting the cost in our court.”
How do you see Odfjell Tankers in the next five years?
“If we look at the fundamentals – and by the fundamentals we mean supply and demand – you can see a growth in the demand for our services that are expected to increase at a fairly steady and good rate.
Now, there many products that are produced far from where they are consumed. We see an actual growth in chemical production. In addition, there is a need for these products to travel longer distances. So, we expect the demand (which is measured in ton-mileage) to increase significantly more than the world fleet will grow.
There are fewer and fewer ships being delivered beyond 2020 and 2021, and no one has really put in any significant order for chemical tankers. This gives good reason to be optimistic.
The second thing which gives good reason for optimism is that with the new regulations, there will be more clean petroleum products that need to be moved to fuel ships with compliant fuel in ports that currently don't have that type of fuel available.
We believe that this will absorb a lot of the MR tonnage in our market today because the clean petroleum market is so bad right now. We expect this clean tonnage to be pulled out and go into the clean market, and make the supply significantly smaller. With an expected increase in demand and reduction in supply, we can be in for some good times.
I really believe that the market will turn for the better, that we will in the near future be a profitable company. And I think that we will see a much healthier market which will enable us to grow and build a stronger customer platform and stronger commercial platform.
How can the seafarers contribute to the achievement of these goals?
“Our seafarers must remember that we need to continue to improve. We can never stop improving, we need to be smarter than our competitors and we need to be more efficient than our competitors. And any idea on how to improve – for example, time in port – is of utmost importance. Our seafarers should always want to improve, in a way that will never compromise safety.
Safety is our number one priority. If we don't focus on vetting approvals, we will lose the ability to trade. If we lose vettings, or even more importantly, if we have safety incidents, it becomes extremely hard to trade our ships. CEO Kristian Mørch always says that safety is our license to operate. We cannot repeat that enough, simply because if we do not get these things right then it becomes very difficult and eventually impossible to trade.”
Safety continues to be our number one priority, and we should always try to improve – try to be more efficient and gain that competitive advantage over our competitors.”
Who is Bjørn outside of Odfjell?
“I am married and a father of four. We are an active family and I enjoy spending the evenings I have available together with my wife and children, either at home or at sports activities.
I am a keen golfer. When I lived in the US I played a lot. Since we moved back to Norway, I haven't had the time to play that much, unfortunately. I also like to ski, and in the winter we often go skiing in weekends and during the school winter break.
And I also like music a lot. I used to play bass guitar in a band when I was a student. And I still play; I have quite a few instruments at home and whenever I have time on a Friday night, when everybody's asleep, I play. I even play a little together with the family, and now that my kids are growing up, I look forward to teaching them how to play the piano. Music is an important part of my life.”
