May 5 - OL International has acquired Orion Marine - a project steamship agent specialising in delivering project, oversized and hazardous cargo.
Alan Baer, president of OL International, commented on the acquisition: "We are primarily a container company and an NVOCC. We have a strong background going back to the 1990s handling FCL and LCL but not really what I would classify as high wide and heavy.
"Orion Marine brings with them 30 years of experience doing high wide and heavy - they have a lot of customers that have that type of project, breakbulk, flatrack and open top cargo. Now we have the those capabilities in house and we can cascade this across our organisation to all our existing clients."
Baer said Orion has experience in moving project cargoes to remote locations. "Now we can go to our existing client base and say 'we can go to the farthest corners of the world in an experienced and systematic way'."
He said the main ports of call for heavy lift and project cargoes will be in the CIS and Black Sea regions, as well as East and West Africa. Flatrack and open tops will be shipped all over the world.
Baer intends to achieve synergies between the two organisations by cross selling their respective capabilities to their existing customer bases.
"Hopefully we will both find 10-20 percent growth in the market of high, wide and heavy and the cross selling of containers. If we can achieve that every year for the next two-to-three years it will be a good marriage," said Baer.
