![\"10_2_2_Grindrod_01_Captain_Grindrod\"](\"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/10\/10_2_2_Grindrod_01_Captain_Grindrod1.jpg\")
<\/a>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 \u00a0in 2007. Photograph: Grindrod<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n 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\u2019 agencies, logistics and storage, cargo operations, terminal management, and railways.<\/p>\n [new_royalslider id=”15″]<\/p>\n About Grindrod in 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Grindrod’s current fleet <\/strong><\/p>\n Bulk Carriers \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 26 owned \u00a0 \u00a0 11 on charter<\/p>\n Products Tankers \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 14 owned \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a003 on charter<\/p>\n Several containerships have also been chartered for the various trades in which the company participates.<\/p>\n Read this modified from an article in Maritime Southern Africa<\/em>, November-December 2010. Then answer the questions set at the end of the article.<\/span><\/p>\n 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 \u2013 perhaps remembering his own days of harbour wanderings.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n My bicycle also took me to No 6 Quay [a berth for coasters in Cape Town harbour]<\/em> where I found barrels of lube oil and paraffin, a range of household goods and occasionally someone\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of those vessels were small \u2013 less than 50 metres \u2013 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 <\/em>and Range<\/em>, similar straight-stemmed vessels with tall, narrow funnels; there were Barrier <\/em>and Margin<\/em> 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 <\/em>had been wrecked at Danger Point in 1963, and Margin<\/em> had a near-miss when she curiously grounded on Neptune Beach in Algoa Bay, but fortunately, the Port Elizabeth tugs CF Kayser<\/em> and John Dock<\/em> pulled her off the beach.)<\/span><\/p>\n The 1947-vintage Voortrekker <\/em>held a special place in the company for she was custom-built for the trade to Port Elizabeth.<\/span><\/p>\n An integral part of African Coasters was the Grindrod family whose involvement in local shipping extends back to a small ships\u2019 agency, coaling and forwarding company that Captain John Grindrod established in Durban a century ago.<\/span><\/p>\n A major step forward was the merger of African Coasters and their rival Smith\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n The company pioneered containerised coastal shipping along the South African coast when it chartered the small ro-ro vessel Voorloper <\/em>in 1971. A shipbuilding programme in Durban produced the 60-metre Oranjemund <\/em>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.<\/span><\/p>\n I was aboard Kowie<\/em>, a 8676-deadweight multi-purpose ship that, with her sister, Nahoon<\/em>, and some of the Trampco ships, was on the weekly Durban-Cape Town service in 1982-83.<\/span><\/p>\n For a while, Unicorn used ro-ro shipping, initially to move only vehicles and then came the two large ro-ro vessels Border <\/em>and Barrier<\/em>. On a voyage aboard Border<\/em>, 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 <\/em>and her consort Frontier<\/em> 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!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019 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.<\/span><\/p>\n 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<\/em> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n The largest component in Grindrod remains its shipping division, strengthened by a massive \u2013 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.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n The company\u2019s early coastal shipping operation has evolved to Ocean Africa Container Line that moves feeder and coastal cargoes between ports ranging from Luanda to Mozambique.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n 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!<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-2-2-major-shipping-companies","category-grindrod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maritimesa.org\/grade-10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
<\/h4>\n
Teach Yourself<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
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