Captain John Grindrod, the founder of the company. His son, Walter Grindrod, succeeded him as managing director, and his grandson, Murray Grindrod, took over as managing director of the company in 1965 until his retirement as Chairman of the Grindrod group  in 2007. Photograph: Grindrod

Grindrod is the holding company of Unicorn Tankers and Island View Shipping and several other subsidiary companies. The following are some important events in the history of Grindrod. Besides those listed here, Grindrod has bought a number of other companies to grow its operations to become a leader in teh South African maritime industry with extensive local and international roles in ship operation, ship chartering, ships’ agencies, logistics and storage, cargo operations, terminal management, and railways.

• 1910 Captain John Grindrod established Grindrod & Company, a clearing and forwarding agency that also offered marine surveying.
• 1912 Grindrod added ships’ agency work, ship chandling and coaling to his company’s services. Advocate Leon Renaud and Captain John Grindrod established the SS Frontier (1922) Company to operate a small coaster from Durban to Port St Johns and East London. Grindrod & Company appointed agents.
• 1930 Captain Grindrod dies suddenly in Durban
• 1933 Advocate Renaud establishes African Coasters.
• 1937 African Coasters purchases SS Frontier (1922) Company Ltd, and over the years, a few small ships were added to the fleet.
• 1954 Regulations that prevented the coasting companies from developing to their potential were abolished and African Coasters (and their rivals) began to expand.
• 1964 The Johannesburg-based mining company Union Corporation buys a 51 per cent shareholding in African Coasters, providing much-needed capital for fleet modernisation.
• 1966 African Coasters and Smith’s Coasters (established in 1889, and later began to move mainly sugar from Durban to Cape ports) merge, and the shares are transferred to a new company, Unicorn Shipping Holdings (Pty) Ltd. Unicorn Lines is formed.
• 1967 Unicorn buys Thesen’s Steamship Company (formed in 1869 and evolved to trade mainly along the west coast to Walvis Bay)
• 1969 Unicorn built three coasters in Durban for the Durban-Cape trade. This was the start of an 11-ship building programme using local shipyards.
• 1971 Unicorn developed its first container depot at Methven Road, Durban. The first weekly container service between Durban and Cape Town was started when the small ro-ro containership Voorloper entered service. Unicorn began the development of a container depot in Port Elizabeth.
• 1972 Unicorn began operating a container depot in East London.
• 1973 Unicorn bought its first large products tanker, Africa Shell.
• 1974 Unicorn built South Africa’s first custom-designed container depot in Cape Town. Grindrod bought the Mosenthal Group that included the ships’ agency King & Sons, and the ownership of Durban Lines (formed in 1955 for trade to Mozambique and the Indian Ocean islands).
• 1976 Unicorn began operating a container depot at City Deep, Johannesburg.
• 1977 Unicorn manages the tanker Mobil Durban, the company’s entry to the operation of product tankers along the southern African coast. (Thesens had operated a small tanker along the west coast.)
• 1978 Unicorn built a second container depot in Durban.
• 1983 Unicorn celebrated 50 years of operation.
• 1986 Financial transactions returned the control of Unicorn Lines to the Grindrod Group. Grindrod Terminals was established. The Grindrod Unicorn Group Ltd (Grincor, the holding company of Unicorn) was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
• 1989 Voigt Shipping (later ISS-Voigt Shipping) was established.
• 1996 Engen Rainbow, the first of the new series of four products tankers, was launched in Poland. She was not the first tanker operated by the company, but she was the first of a new class of tanker that put the Grindrod group ahead of many others.
• 1998 Unicorn Tankers International was established, formed out of BVI company established in 1984. Grindrod secures a stake in Maputo port.
• 1999 April: Oranjemund was the last Unicorn vessel to sail from Port Nolloth, closing the company’s direct links with the port. Safmarine was unbundled; the Restis Group of Athens bought the bulk, reefer, tug and certain other divisions of Safmarine, including a 40 percent share in Unicorn that Safmarine owned. Grindrod bought  back the 40 percent of Unicorn shares held by the Restis Group. Unicorn purchases Island View Shipping, marking the Group’s entry to the dry bulk shipping sector. Eyethu Ships’ Agency was formed as a joint venture between Grindrod Limited and Black Empowerment partners.
• 2000 Unicorn Lines became Unicorn Shipping. Grindrod buys 50 percent of Auto Carrier Transport (Pty) Limited, a company that moves vehicles by road on vehicle-carrying trucks.
• 2001 Unicorn ordered two handy-size bulk carriers from a shipyard in China. Grindrod forms Kusasa Bulk Terminals and Kusasa Logistics with Black Empowerment partners.
• 2001 Grindrod bought a number of other companies, ranging from logistics companies to ships’ agencies. In the process, it formed the largest ships’ agency division in South Africa.
• 2003 Unicorn announced a joint venture with the A. P. Moller Group of Denmark to operate the coastal container service from Mombasa to Luanda, and the last coastwise sailing was made by a container ship bearing Unicorn’s logo.
• 2006 Grindrod bought 12.24 percent of Maputo Port from a private consortium, and also announced its intention of spending $25 million to upgrade the Matola Coal Terminal.
• 2007 Restructuring of the Group’s involvement in the tanker sector saw the formation of a joint venture, UniCal, under which banner local tanker and bunker tanker operations now fall. Grindrod increased its shareholding in Maputo Port Development Company to 24.7 percent, and the construction of a car terminal and ferrochrome terminal began at the port. Grindrod invested further in its terminals in Richards Bay and Durban, and, through IVS, takes delivery of the largest vessel built for the group, the new 180 000 deadweight Capesize bulker, IVS Cabernet.
• 2008 Grindrod Group announced record profits for the previous financial year. Unicorn and Calulo Services, a subsidiary of Calulo Petrochemicals, formed a joint venture to develop their maritime activities in Southern Africa. This included the operation of sophisticated bunker barges in South African ports, and tanker services on the southern African coast.
• 2008. The so-called worldwide “Credit Crunch” began in USA, with serious effects on the global economy, with a devastating impact on shipping.
• 2010 Grindrod Group celebrates its Centenary.

History of Grindrod Slide 1 of 13

The 32-metre steamer Border operated between Durban and Port St Johns from 1938 to 1946 when she was sold to another company. She was wrecked on the west coast the following year.Photograph: Grindrod

History of Grindrod Slide 2 of 13

Cecile Mapleson was African Coasters’ first ship.

History of Grindrod Slide 3 of 13

Built in Germany in 1922, African Coasters’ Barrier traded along the coast for African Coasters from 1953 until she was scrapped in 1965.  Photograph: Lawhill-Unicorn Collection

History of Grindrod Slide 4 of 13

One of the early Thesen ships, Swazi (30 metres) traded along the west coast between 1927 and 1956, calling at ports such as Saldanha Bay (then just a fishing village), Lambert’s Bay and Port Nolloth, all with draught restrictions.

History of Grindrod Slide 5 of 13

To replace older ships that were slow and uneconomical to operate, Smith’s Coasters bought several smart motorships, including the 1953-built Ingane in 1964, for their service between Durban and Cape ports, carrying mainly sugar and paper downcoast, and canned goods, liquor and fish products on their return voyages to Durban. Photograph : Lawhill-Unicorn Collection

History of Grindrod Slide 6 of 13

Africa Shell (19020 dwt), Unicorn’s first large products tanker.

History of Grindrod Slide 7 of 13

Engen Rainbow (later Rainbow) launched in Poland in 1997. Photograph: Lawhill-Unicorn Collection

History of Grindrod Slide 8 of 13

Grindrod’s Kusasa facility at Richards Bay. Various types of mineral sand and ores are stored here prior to export. Photograph: Grindrod

History of Grindrod Slide 9 of 13

The Maputo Coal Terminal in which Grindrod has an important shareholding.  Photograph: Grindrod

History of Grindrod Slide 10 of 13

The Korean-built products tanker Southern Unity. Photograph: Andrew Ingpen

History of Grindrod Slide 11 of 13

Products tanker Nyathi, one of 11 sisterships built in Korea at a time when these ships were earning high daily rates. Photograph: Grindrod

History of Grindrod Slide 12 of 13

Breede, one of Unicorn’s River-class products tankers in Cape Town. Some of the company’s tankers operate on charters along the South African coast; others operate internationally.

History of Grindrod Slide 13 of 13

The Capesize bulker IVS Cabernet. Island View Shipping, a part of the Grindrod Group, specialises in the movement of bulk and neo-bulk cargoes. Photograph: Grindrod

About Grindrod in 2016

Grindrod is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and is based in South Africa, with its head office in Durban. It has a number of subsidiary companies, joint venture and associated companies in 43 countries worldwide, employing more than 7 500 skilled people. Grindrod’s business involves the movement of cargo by road, rail, sea and air, through integrated logistics services. Its shipping division focuses on the movement of drybulk and bulk liquid commodities, containerised cargo and vehicles.

Grindrod’s current fleet

Bulk Carriers                     26 owned     11 on charter

Products Tankers             14 owned      03 on charter

Several containerships have also been chartered for the various trades in which the company participates.

Teach Yourself

Read this modified from an article in Maritime Southern Africa, November-December 2010. Then answer the questions set at the end of the article.

Watching the coasters discharge paper, sugar and detergents while berthed at South Arm in Cape Town harbour was a delightful experience back in the 1960s and even before. Even if few ships were in the rest of the harbour, I was always assured of at least one coaster alongside, and occasionally a friendly officer would invite this ship-mad kid aboard – perhaps remembering his own days of harbour wanderings.

I had met some of the coaster masters whom my parents knew from their Durban days, and these old timers were an interminable source of tales, perhaps embroidered for the younger ears.

My bicycle also took me to No 6 Quay [a berth for coasters in Cape Town harbour] where I found barrels of lube oil and paraffin, a range of household goods and occasionally someone’s car waiting to be loaded aboard a Thesen coaster for one of the small west coast ports where draught was a limiting factor for shipping at those harbours.

Some of those vessels were small – less than 50 metres – while some of the Durban-based coasters had steamed through 30 winters by the time African Coasters bought them. I recall the 40-year old Bulwark and Range, similar straight-stemmed vessels with tall, narrow funnels; there were Barrier and Margin that carried cargo along the coast from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s when they were scrapped in Durban to make way for modern vessels. (Bulwark had been wrecked at Danger Point in 1963, and Margin had a near-miss when she curiously grounded on Neptune Beach in Algoa Bay, but fortunately, the Port Elizabeth tugs CF Kayser and John Dock pulled her off the beach.)

The 1947-vintage Voortrekker held a special place in the company for she was custom-built for the trade to Port Elizabeth.

An integral part of African Coasters was the Grindrod family whose involvement in local shipping extends back to a small ships’ agency, coaling and forwarding company that Captain John Grindrod established in Durban a century ago.

A major step forward was the merger of African Coasters and their rival Smith’s Coasters and the subsequent formation of Unicorn Lines in 1964. The Thesen ships were also added to the Unicorn operation, and the expanded, revitalised company began to modernise its fleet, especially to move paper from Durban to Cape ports.

The company pioneered containerised coastal shipping along the South African coast when it chartered the small ro-ro vessel Voorloper in 1971. A shipbuilding programme in Durban produced the 60-metre Oranjemund for the Port Nolloth trade, three 4000-deadweight coasters, four cargoships, two 394-teu containerships to run feeder cargoes along the coast, and a rig tender for the offshore operations south west of Mossel Bay.

I was aboard Kowie, a 8676-deadweight multi-purpose ship that, with her sister, Nahoon, and some of the Trampco ships, was on the weekly Durban-Cape Town service in 1982-83.

For a while, Unicorn used ro-ro shipping, initially to move only vehicles and then came the two large ro-ro vessels Border and Barrier. On a voyage aboard Border, I remember being so close to the picturesque Wild Coast that features like Hole-in-the-Wall or the beautiful Iron Gates at Port St Johns were clearly visible. I thought of the original Border and her consort Frontier of less than 35 metres that plied the Durban-Port St Johns route in the early days of the company. They sometimes stranded on the unpredictable bar, and were refloated by teams of oxen!  

Grindrod has grown phenomenally and has diversified since those days of the early coasters, venturing successfully into dry bulk and liquid bulk terminals, road transport, container depots, forwarding and clearing, logistics, trading, bunkering and banking. Its ships’ agency division has expanded through the acquisition of a number of agencies, some of which began even before the advent of Grindrod and Company in 1910, and who serve some of the leading shipowners on the South African trade.

The Cape Town offices of King & Sons, Mitchell Cotts and Ellerman & Bucknall were among those I badgered, in my younger days, for post cards of the ships they serviced, and usually, someone looked kindly on me, delved into a drawer and produced a wad of postcards of Bullard King ships, Port Line freighters, or Shell tankers, or the famous City ships. After a successful trip to town, I would scuttle off home to add my newly-acquired postcards to my growing collection in which you will still find those provided by the kind folks in the agencies that are now part of the Grindrod stable.

The largest component in Grindrod remains its shipping division, strengthened by a massive – and far-sighted – capital commitment to tanker construction, initially in Poland during the 1990s, and more recently in Korea and China. Three bunker tankers are also in service, two built in China and one in Durban.

The significant purchase of Island View Shipping in 1999 led to the group benefiting from the extraordinary freight and charter rates that prevailed from 2002 to 2008, catapulting share prices to unprecedented levels.

The company’s early coastal shipping operation has evolved to Ocean Africa Container Line that moves feeder and coastal cargoes between ports ranging from Luanda to Mozambique.

Although world shipping markets have tumbled recently, shareholders nod with appreciation that astute management has ensured that the 40 owned ships and those that the company has taken on long-term charter have been fixed on favourable terms.

Central to its hundred years of operations has been the Grindrod family, and most remarkable was the role of the late Murray Grindrod, grandson of the founder. For half of the company’s existence, Murray Grindrod worked in various roles, starting at Maydon Wharf where the old coasters used to load their sugar, paper and detergent cargoes, and later he moved up the ladder to lead his dynamic management team until his retirement as chairman in 2007. Although he passed away in 2015, his commitment and personal integrity remain hallmarks of the company.

More than 50 summers have passed since my schoolboy adventures along South Arm as the coasters berthed and sailed. In that time, Grindrod has moved on considerably, developing into a multi-faceted international company, operating dozens of ships, with terminals in Maputo and Walvis Bay, and with offices in several foreign centres. A remarkable record!

1.  List all the cargoes that are mentioned in this article.
2. Write down three interesting aspects of the trade from Durban to Port St Johns.
3. From the article, what would you say is the most remarkable aspect of the growth of Grindrod over the years. Explain your choice of aspect for your answer.
4. Among all shipping people in South Africa and abroad, Mr Murray Grindrod was a highly respected gentleman. What characteristics does the article list that would have contributed to that level of respect accorded to Mr Grindrod?