Norfolkline appoint new Irish Sea Route Director

Poul Woodall is joining Norfolkline’s Irish Sea Ferries operations at an interesting time. The transportation business is notoriously cyclical – and this is one of the cycle’s troughs.

“Fuel is a concern, so is inflation, the credit crunch sparked by the housing market. These are three negative factors affecting international trade and our business,” he said from his office in Belfast.

He’s still getting to know the operations. He’s only been in his new position as Route Director for Irish Sea Services for a few weeks. But he has a clear handle on where he wants the company to go.

“My role is to take Norfolkline to the next level. While I’m here we have to make sure we expand our business at a pace that exceeds economic growth. We have to come up at the right time with new ideas and new products and, when I look back in some years to come to measure my own success, it will be to what extent we were able to expand the business.”

Not an easy time to do it. But with thirty-four years’ experience in the shipping business, he’s come to understand that if there’s anything you have to do, it is to take the opportunities where they arise.

Times have changed since Poul Woodall first joined the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group as a management trainee. It was 1974 and he was just 19 years old, “it was not young in those days,” he laughs.

After two years he was sent to Jakarta “to learn about the real world” – for him a completely different world. “As a young person getting a decent responsibility in a place like that, you learn a lot. That’s part of the reason the group does it.”

His focus at that time was mainly on the commercial side of the business. He had a number of other postings and then, in 1985, A.P. Moller-Maersk bought Norfolkline from Unilever. “For the first two years I worked in the roll-on-roll-off ferry business.” He spent six years in the UK, getting to know the business even better. Then, in 1991 he began to focus on the container side of the business and, in 1995, became responsible for fleet operations of the container ships.

That wealth of experience makes him a wise choice to become Norfolkline’s Route Director for Irish Sea Services. It’s given him the knowledge of the business to be able to plan for the long term, but it’s also given him the wisdom to understand that the key to any business is being strong enough to focus on being flexible enough to respond to opportunities as they arise.

“In the 70s the first oil crisis was a complete shock to the world,” he said. “Although energy prices today are higher in real terms than they were then, we are not stopping traffic on Sundays or taking other measures that we did then. Society has developed a way to cope with these things.”

So, despite the current difficult economic climate, he is eager to bring Norfolkline to the next level.

Currently, Norfolkline Irish Sea Ferries has a fleet of nine vessels – four are ro/pax, five are ro/ro – three are owned and 6 are chartered. They cover four routes between Belfast and Dublin to Heysham, and Belfast and Dublin to Liverpool.

In terms of a breakdown between commercial and passenger traffic, they are carrying 420,000 total units of freight per annum, and 80,000 tourist cars (with 250,000 passengers) each year.

Of Norfolkline’s Irish operations right now, he says, “Business isn’t growing the way we would like to see it. Transportation and shipping has always been cyclical; we’ve had bad patches before. In this one, we have to be on our toes in terms of keeping our costs under control.”

That means, he believes, spending where it’s needed to keep the business moving, and then looking at the numbers to see where they can be smarter about running the business.

While he isn’t yet ready to make any announcements, he will say where he thinks opportunities lie.

“There’ll be a change in pattern of behaviour. We are partly in the holiday market. We have seen that a number of our colleagues in the industry have cut back on their services. Does that open up opportunities? This is what we have to keep an eye on.”

But he also believes that there are structural changes occurring in the industry.

“When things like this happen, patterns change. Trading patterns change for cargo and passengers. We have to be aware of them. As time goes past things change permanently. The shock to the system is when things change rapidly, as with recently in change in oil prices and credit crisis. The industry will adapt over time – it’s that adaptation time that is a shock to the system.

“Even if it hadn’t happened we would still have to change because the world changes. Hopefully every year we get smarter than we were last year, come up with new innovations, become more environmentally friendly, and run our business more efficiently.”

And that’s where his 34 years in the business is going to stand him – and Norfolkline – in good stead.