In this riveting episode of ‘Shipshape,’ we delve into the fascinating world of the maritime industry with our esteemed guest, Lena Gothberg. Lena, a 25-year industry veteran, and the charismatic host of the popular Shipping Podcast, shares her journey and passion for an industry often misunderstood yet vitally important. From her initial encounter with the ‘shipping bug’ to her tireless efforts to raise visibility and understanding of the sector, Lena’s insights are as enlightening as they are captivating. We explore the unique character and quirks of the maritime world, the personalities that make it tick, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Whether you’re a seasoned sailor or a landlubber, this episode promises a voyage of discovery that will leave you with a newfound appreciation for the maritime industry.
Brought to you by SHIPSHAPE
Host:
Merrill Charette
Talha Bhatty
Transcript ——————————
Farah [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the Shipshape podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical and all related to the maritime world. Come and dive in. Dive in. Dive in.
Merrill Charette [00:00:36] Today on the Shipshape podcast, we have Lena Gothberg, host and producer of the shipping podcast at over 200 episodes. She knows her ship. Your two co-hosts today are Meryl Shore and I’m a Liveaboard on a Torshavn two ship, a 36 in Boston, Massachusetts and Tea.
Talha Bhatty [00:00:55] Hey guys, welcome to the shipshape guys. Talha Bhatty here we have a really interesting guest on with us today because Lena is going to give us some really cool insights on a career in podcasting. So we’re going to ask her how to stay alive and thrive, hopefully in that in that industry. And then she’s our first actual shipping person. So we’re going to deep dive into that and find out and make that stick. And welcome to the show, Nina.
Lena [00:01:25] Thank you. Hello. I’m the guest. My name is Lena Gothberg, and I’m based in Gotham Bergs. It’s not Miss Gotham Borough, but my name is Miss Goth. I live in Gotham Burg. And so even on the west coast of Sweden, which is where the biggest port in Scandinavia is the Port of Gotham. But it’s small compared to a lot of other places. But thank you for having me as a guest. This is new to me.
Talha Bhatty [00:01:50] Thank you. So maybe let’s start there. Does it feel to be on the other side? You’re usually asking all the questions.
Lena [00:01:56] I feel a little bit nervous. I can. I can admit.
Talha Bhatty [00:01:59] That Brand new feeling.
Lena [00:02:01] Yeah. And I feel important. Now I understand why it’s so easy to get all the hot shot people on my podcasts because I offer them a platform and a place to speak up.
Merrill Charette [00:02:16] Now, before we get into the podcast and how you’ve already done over 200 episodes, you’ve been around since 2015. How exactly did you get introduced to Marine? Did you grow up boating or in Marine? How’d that happen?
Lena [00:02:31] No, I stepped on that famous banana leaf. I just slipped into this. I studied law and then when I when I finished my studies, I started working for an insurance company. Some all I knew was recruiting people to become marine insurance brokers in Sweden. We were not allowed to have marine insurance brokers before we entered into the EU. Before that, we were an agent for one insurance company. But the broker is more like buying the insurance on behalf of the clients. So I had a lot of clients, but it didn’t really have anything in order behind the scenes. And he saw me as the administrative wizard to come in and sort it out. So I did that. So I was working as a marine insurance broker, and then I didn’t know anything about Marine. So the first thing he did was to make me and the lady who was accompany me into the company, she was going to work with the financial side of things. He put us on a boat, on a ship to Germany.
Talha Bhatty [00:03:36] And this is the first time ever. But yeah.
Lena [00:03:38] In my job. Yeah, of course, we can always go by ferry here. We only have one bridge to Europe, so usually it’s a lot of Ro-Ro vessels roll on, roll off, or passenger ships. But in my job, that was my first trip. Yeah. So that was then to do that. So yeah, the first time I saw the trip, the first time I saw sea, the engineer. But we had so much fun. Yeah, but joke aside, I also. Yeah, it was a lot of insuring with Lloyd’s in London, so I worked a lot with them at that time. Our company were owned by Norwegians at that time, then bought by British people and then bought by American people. So I’ve been working with a lot of different cultures. I mean, if you have a ship, it’s worth so much. So no one takes the entire it’s not like you can call your insurance company and ensure your ship, your sorry, your car or something like that, because that is not a big amount. But if you have a big ship, you need to have more than one insurance house or insurance company to insure you you put in. I mean, you can say I can take a risk for $30 million. Yeah, I’ll take the next one. That is also $30 million. You need someone to keep it together. And that was me at that time.
Talha Bhatty [00:04:59] I see.
Lena [00:05:00] So I had a lot to do with Star Cruises at that time.
Talha Bhatty [00:05:04] With the Star Cruiser.
Lena [00:05:06] Star Cruises. They were buying passenger ships from the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Denmark, called Viking at that time, and then put them in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and rebuilt them to become casino ships. And they brought a lot of people from Sweden and Finland and Olam, which is a small island with them, because they knew everything about the ships and the people who bought them, they didn’t know. Anything about shipping. They knew everything about real estate, casinos and hotels. So they needed to have some help with that. So then I wrote the book, Did it.
Talha Bhatty [00:05:42] Did you get to travel, though?
Lena [00:05:43] Yeah.
Talha Bhatty [00:05:44] Traveling?
Lena [00:05:45] Yeah. I also used to work and ensure a lot of the stuff on the vessels Stay nice. A big ship only in my city. It’s a lot of tankers, passenger ships, RO-RO, vessels, oil and drilling, all of that. And this was back in the in the nineties. So it was like when there was a war in the Persian Gulf. So there were a lot of war risks premium. That was you couldn’t believe it, how much it cost. So you have to have earn a lot by trading with the oil into the Persian Gulf or going in to get it out in order to be able to pay all this premium because it was while horrendous at that time. Well, I learned a lot about the ships and the maritime and all of that by just sitting behind my desk and traveling to see the clients.
Merrill Charette [00:06:34] And then at what point did the podcast become a thing?
Lena [00:06:37] Oh, should I skip 15 years in between?
Talha Bhatty [00:06:41] No, no, don’t skip on Skip. What happens in 15 years?
Merrill Charette [00:06:45] In 15 minutes.
Lena [00:06:47] Not five. So after having been a broker, you know, buying insurance on behalf of the clients, then I became a seller on the other side. So I became a real underwriter. So I was insuring ships in Sweden in part of the Nordic management team. The owner were Danish and I was working with Norwegian Athens. So I know a lot about different cultures. Everyone thinks that Scandinavia is one country. No, we are not. So then I insured a lot of from the smallest boats, working boats to the big passenger ships. And then I quit that job. And then I was asked to take care of something called Institute of Shipping Analysis. Sounds very fancy. And it was all about business plans and what you have to put into a business plan to know where you’re going. So macroeconomics, shipyards. Where were all the ships built? When will they be delivered? Trade and so on. At that time that was an association and they asked me if I could turn it around and get more members and more income. And I said, Fine, I can do that. But they didn’t give me any budget for March, which is rather stupid, but a bit typical for this industry. You’re not supposed to spend any money on the soft values. Soft values. That is marketing, communication, h.r. And insurance. And i’ve done them all, so i know. So i decided, okay, they will not give me a budget for marketing. So i started hanging out with people who love online communication. So there were a lot of young people with bloggers and bloggers and programmers and all of those guys.
Talha Bhatty [00:08:42] Inside the company.
Lena [00:08:43] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I went outside to find people because the board was not as young to know anything about social media or things like that, I tell you. So I listen to someone talking about podcasting and I said, Wow, that’s cool. That’s like radio, more or less just a podcast about shipping. And I said, No, there is no one. And I came back to the same place a year later and I said, No, they look stupid. And they said to me, You better shut up or start.
Talha Bhatty [00:09:20] Your own started.
Lena [00:09:21] Yeah, Yeah. So I did. I went home, decided that my podcast was going to be shipping podcast, and I got the domain.
Talha Bhatty [00:09:32] Name and what year it.
Lena [00:09:33] Was 2015. During the summer, 2050.
Talha Bhatty [00:09:37] Yeah. O.G. status? No.
Lena [00:09:40] So I signed an online course and this was before everyone knew was teams or Zoom, anything like that. So I signed up for a course in the US and I had no idea what I was signing up to, but it was a course called Podcasting School for Women. And just by chance, I got to know and become friends with the two best and most knowledgeable women in podcasting in the entire U.S.. So that was just by my lucky charm. But but they were a little bit confused because every other pupil or every other student on that course were from Canada or the US. And then there was this blond woman from the from Scandinavia. And that is really no. And and you use people and you use people because of the. Any money. So I signed up and I was spending every Monday evening during the summer with them. And I learned how to do this from starts the craft, how to do it, how to start, what to think about and what not to do and all of that. And nice. Those ladies still have that podcast. So they are see podcasts and that is Escobar from she works with Gibson and Jessica Kupferman and those two are. Wow. I started a Facebook group. I think they have more than 20,000 female podcasters in that one now. They are the best.
Talha Bhatty [00:11:09] And it’s only going to keep growing. So people are just embracing podcasts.
Lena [00:11:13] Yeah, so that is how it started. And then the people in my industry tried to snatch my name shipping podcasts, but they couldn’t because I owned the domain and I decided to build a website. It’s still there. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to remake it, but I knew that the people in the maritime industry, the shipping industry, had no idea about podcasting because there was no podcast, no one knew about it. So I had to build a website for the least interested, but most wanted to listen. That is the CEO in my industry. So there is a very big play button. And when they asked me How can I listen to myself, I said, Go to a computer, write shipping podcast dot com, sit still and press play and it will be there. And they were Wow. And the first couple, the first two years I spent just walking around getting all people’s mobile in my hand to show them what the app looked like and how they could listen from their mobile to Yes, I did, but I have had more than 100 mobiles in my head because they had no idea.
Talha Bhatty [00:12:29] You were hearing people.
Lena [00:12:31] It’s so much more mainstream now. Yeah. Yeah.
Talha Bhatty [00:12:34] Big companies. Yeah. Nice. Okay.
Merrill Charette [00:12:37] And so how were you received on some of the first few episodes that you put out?
Lena [00:12:41] They were like, okay, she’s probably onto something, but we don’t really understand. And as everyone says, the first ten episodes, you hate them once you get to know, get the hang of it because the sound quality is not as good and you don’t really know how to do it. But the first episode I did, I didn’t even own any equipment. I just borrowed that from someone and I made my way onto one of the largest container ships that was calling the port of got them, but they couldn’t stop me. And that captain was so nice. So he showed me around this. He was on the verge on tour with this container ship from Singapore, straight somewhere around the Singapore, I think. And he came to Gothenburg all the way and he put up a tweet when he was leaving Singapore Straits saying en route to Europe. And I reply to his tweet saying, I’m on your way to go somewhere but just. And he said, So I said, I will be on the key side to say hello when you come here.
Talha Bhatty [00:13:44] And eventually with a recording device.
Lena [00:13:47] I had to be right. Yeah, it was hard to get in, but I did it. But how was it received? Yeah, it was like, I think people know that I’m not just playing around. I deliver when I, when I put my mind to something. So they knew that there would be something, but I didn’t understand it. After a while, people started saying to me, We understand now. You saw the void. There was no other one doing podcasting and you saw it, then you did it. So I think that got recognition afterwards.
Talha Bhatty [00:14:18] Any incident in the beginning, was it just more CEOs and like so you didn’t did you actually get into because of the shipping for podcasts, how many layers of like the shipping industry did you explore?
Lena [00:14:30] Well, when I started it, it was more like, I’m so fed up sort of explaining what I do to everyone outside this little bubble. So that is why I started it. I wanted everyone else to know how exciting it is to be my rhythm. So I decided, well, I need to have. I was recommended not to have just one episode released first, but four, because if people you know, if they didn’t like this one, they could test the other one. So the first four one was the first one was with the captain on the ship. Then it was the CEO of Steamer and it was female banker, specialized in maritime from Norway. And then I interviewed the guy who set up all the social media channels for Maersk. You’re not them, You’re not on this. I met him in Copenhagen and he just wanted to help. So I let those four out. And then I started to think, Well, I need to start by picking the low hanging fruit first. So I asked everyone I knew. Hey, unit tempo now. Don’t you want to start? Cause I started by the youngest I knew because they were a little bit more like, Yeah, that sounds interesting. And then just slide ten episodes in an hour. I thought, Well, I can probably do something with this platform. I can probably change things. So I set up a goal for myself that I would have 50% female voices and 50% male voices on my podcast because you hardly hear or see any women in the maritime industry, in the press, hardly ever. So I wanted to have that goal, but I didn’t know if I would make it or not. I didn’t really believe in it, but I had that as a goal. And then I realized, I know so many women in the maritime industry around the world because I have been a member of Women in Shipping and Trading Association Vista, and that is an association for women in maritime in more than 50 countries. And for two years I was their communications officer and support to them. So I knew so many women in 50 different countries. So I asked them. It took me five years, but I have equally men and women on my podcast now and I’m proud of that.
Talha Bhatty [00:16:48] Good stuff.
Lena [00:16:49] Yeah, but but also I realized also that maybe because it was downloaded in the maritime hubs around the world, I could see that. So maybe it was maritime people eavesdropping on each other because, you know, I interview people on innovation and I’m a technical nerd and I like those things changing the industry. So I realized they are listening to each other. So I had to change the concept a little bit and not just talk to the general public and politicians, some young people and so on, but to interview people, also to talk about the new stuff going on. So for a while it was a lot of not self-driving cars but self-driving ships and things like that.
Talha Bhatty [00:17:36] And are we there? Do we do we make it?
Lena [00:17:38] Yeah, there are a few. Yeah.
Talha Bhatty [00:17:41] I guess.
Lena [00:17:42] So. I started to think if I do innovation, there is also more women in that part of our industry because I could see a lot of young women 30, 35 coming into the industry and they knew everything about blockchain and all of those digital things because there was not a man standing in their way. They could just, you know, they just in there.
Talha Bhatty [00:18:06] The Internet sort of empowered them that way.
Lena [00:18:08] Yeah. And I met them and I asked them, I said, Could you maybe do a blockchain course for newcomers for me? Explain it to me. I don’t know anything about it. And then everyone else could learn something as well.
Merrill Charette [00:18:22] And so have you received kind of as you were doing this, this podcast and creating awareness and information about Marine and and really filling in that gap? Did you receive any type of support from the industry itself, or what’s the story with that?
Lena [00:18:40] Are you talking sponsors or what are you talking to sponsors?
Merrill Charette [00:18:46] People in the industry kind of.
Talha Bhatty [00:18:47] How are you finding the know? Yeah.
Lena [00:18:50] I’ve it’s all of it’s me. It’s out of my pocket still. When I started, all the people I know in the industry who were close by, they understood that I was going to do something. So they sent they said to me, Send me a bill. So I did that. And then after a while, I realized, well, I can’t really, you know, market each and every episode because it takes too long. It takes too long. And this is still a hobby, and I still need to do some work. So I decided that maybe I should have a platform of more than one company paying a little bit more. And then I could, you know, rest and do other things in between. So I started to analyze who is spending the most money on marketing in our industry, especially on conferences, because I think that maybe podcasts could be an alternative to conferences because usually you go to a conference to learn something or to meet people to mingle, and you don’t have to listen to someone if you’re mingling. But if you still want to learn something, you can definitely listen to a podcast. And then I realized at a big five conferences in our industry, it’s the pacification societies that are spending the most money.
Talha Bhatty [00:20:06] When you say where does that mean classification society.
Lena [00:20:08] Like like DMV and what do you have in a B.S. and what do you have in the States? That’s abso I think American bureau abs. Yeah. Those. You need to have your classified because before it is.
Talha Bhatty [00:20:24] Only to.
Lena [00:20:25] Be certified more or less. And then they want to go to conferences and meet shipowners and buyers and so on. But I realized that the people who went to these conferences and had the budget for that, they had no idea what a podcast was, and they wanted to continue the way they did travel the world and meet the same people at the next conference. So that maybe.
Talha Bhatty [00:20:50] Comes a circuit, meet each other every. Right.
Lena [00:20:54] So then you decided.
Talha Bhatty [00:20:55] How do you break that? Would you do.
Lena [00:20:57] Maybe people with satellite communication. I thought because they are not in the industry yet. So I started by calling in a Swedish company called Ericsson. And when I phoned them, they said, Oh, hello, we love your podcast. Oh, my God. So we were this close in signing a contract because they wanted my podcast on their on their websites and they wanted to.
Talha Bhatty [00:21:22] And then Ericsson went out of business.
Lena [00:21:26] Yeah, Yeah.
Talha Bhatty [00:21:29] Or on the other big company that was at Sony bought the network and Sony Ericsson.
Lena [00:21:34] And.
Talha Bhatty [00:21:35] The gold chain.
Lena [00:21:37] But I have had shipowners asking me to make commercials for their podcasts in my podcast because they want my audience for nothing. They don’t want to pay. And those are the big names around the world. The same for the UN body that we are working for. They wanted me to come and make a podcast with people in their part of the world, but they wanted me to pay for my trip and for to do all the editing and other stuff. So I said, No, thank you, but no thank you. On the other hand, I have people supporting me and people opening doors to me and people introducing me to very interesting guests and so on and bringing me along on different things. But that’s not the same as sponsoring with money. I would say.
Merrill Charette [00:22:26] Yeah, you know, we’ve certainly experienced the same thing, you know, in the B. What I tell people is I had no idea that the podcast was going to kind of open so many doors and let me communicate with so many different people in the industry that now it’s like, okay, we know the movers and shakers of the industry. I mean, that was the major value that we’ve seen thus far.
Lena [00:22:48] I have one more value, which is that I get so much messages and emails from young people. I love that so many young people reach out to me and tell me what they think and what they what they want me to hear, and that I have opened their eyes to more than one occupation because there’s so much to do in this industry. I also I get emails from teachers at my time, universities writing to me to say, I got I got a whole class full of people studying to become master mariners. And now they say, Why should we become mastermind? As well. There are autonomous ships, and then I tell them, Go and listen to Lana’s podcast and then you will know what you can do just fine on exams and then you’re good to go. And then I feel like, Wow, she’s using me in her teaching to say, Listen to the shipping podcast and you hear what there is to do.
Talha Bhatty [00:23:42] Well, we were realizing that for sure they’d like it. In one level. It’s like capturing knowledge almost and just making it accessible to anybody who wants it. And now, now Gilead becomes like a personal choice. I was, if you like, this is this is how it’s going to be. These are all your options. You want to take that jump and see a whole other slice of reality, really? Because again, they did the first I remember the first time I was thinking about boats and I was like, I remember people did this like a thousand years ago. I don’t know if they still do it right. And once I got in, it just kept you like, Oh, that’s a whole other world here.
Lena [00:24:15] It’s is what you do. You listen to many podcasts yourself.
Talha Bhatty [00:24:20] I do. I have a couple of favorites, and it’s definitely like metal. And I know so and people know it is like a companion medium. So you just have it on in the background and you’re doing your own stuff and you’ll be enjoying the stories and learning something, hopefully, but to tell it. So your experience goes back to 2015, right? So you’ve seen things change going on ten years now just in podcasting. You similar question to shipping, but like in these going on ten years, what have you already seen changing in terms of the landscape? I bet education is now way easier and people know what a podcast is now, but what else have you seen?
Lena [00:24:54] A lot of seen, you know, all the free hosting services, which is really not free and not as good as the ones you’re paying for. It’s always like that. What you pay for is usually a little bit better. I’ve seen video become more of a thing.
Talha Bhatty [00:25:10] That’s true, right? Yeah.
Lena [00:25:11] But personally I don’t think that podcast and video is the same thing because I listen to podcasts when I do other stuff.
Talha Bhatty [00:25:19] Like.
Lena [00:25:20] Driving or running or shopping for groceries or cleaning my house. I can’t stand still watching a video at the same time, but I can listen in my ears. So it’s in my ears to my heart and my brain, what I listen to. And as you say, I have my favorites. I miss them. If I don’t listen to them, level it and I say more. I see. I mean, like Spotify came into this industry and then they were a little bit out in and out.
Merrill Charette [00:25:46] And so as we shift our conversations to the shipping, you know, I’m getting a feeling that you’re very much an optimist. So if we can turn into a realist, how is the shipping industry right now? Are we in a good track or There’s a lot of changes in how I’ve heard it described is it’s like we’re at the moment, right when, you know, steam became obsolete and turned to diesel. Like that’s the general feeling that’s happened. Are we actually, in course, to have these innovations? What are your thoughts?
Lena [00:26:18] Yes, we are. But there are still just a few doing that. I mean, there are more than 80,000 ships in the water around the world and the forerunners are why you what you said. We are just changing into something else. And yeah, I’ve done two very interesting interviews coming up, the next release on the release of the people just telling me what it’s like to be out there, the hotshot people, who knows what’s happening, and then the environmental stuff. It’s so real for us. And it’s also about the bottom line. I mean, you can’t really use this very expensive, very old fashioned, very black fuel. You have to find something else. You have to And there’s so many different things happening, I think. But one of the problems when it comes to environmental stuff is that, yeah, it takes four years to build a ship. It takes six years to build a seafarer. So there is a lack of seafarers and we’re still to see the delivery of those ships that are now ordered with the more green solutions to our challenges. Some of the big ship owners have started and they are well ahead of the other ones. But still the average ship owner owned ten ships, so maybe you could compare it to having a ten lorries or something on shore. How can you keep up with the big guys then? So it’s it’s slower, but they are changing the other ones. On the other hand, all the innovation with people who lives and breathes their ships, that’s where it comes from as well. So yeah, I’m very optimistic as well. I’m sorry to be optimistic even on this one, but we’re on time. It’s also to the digital world. So there’s so many things coming in, I would say. And when I started podcasting, I asked people about digitalization and they said, yeah, maybe it’s not for. Like that. And in every episode I ask the people, What do you think about autonomous ships? And the old ones my age, some old rules that will never happen. And and young ones said, When can we test it for you? But then again, I saw the digital move from, okay, well, that’s not for us. Then I saw the consultants coming into the industry and they were consulting on digital. And then after a while, the companies started buying small startups into that company with, you know, technical knowledge and digital and all of that. But now they have their own departments with people doing that. So it’s been a a move into the digital world as well, which I think is interesting.
Talha Bhatty [00:29:06] How do you think is going to change in the next two years?
Lena [00:29:08] Well, we will still have to see this change that we are talking about. But but I think I think the pandemic was sort of helping us in a way. It was terrible. Terrible. We had a crew crisis because the seafarers couldn’t get to their ship or couldn’t get home or couldn’t get vaccinated and all of that. But that made everyone realize that when is my order? Well, my orders from, you know, Amazon and or things like that, or where’s the toilet paper everyone is looking for and what are we lacking? Why isn’t it here yet? Because the seafarers couldn’t deliver it. But they did deliver. They did deliver. Oh, my God, They work to everybody.
Talha Bhatty [00:29:53] There was so much talk about supply chain, the supply chain that like, what’s the situation with that? As I look again in the next few years.
Lena [00:29:59] Well, it’s picking up. But on the other hand, we have had China closed for a long while. You know, they had a zero tolerance for pandemic. And that was hard for people, you know, importing things from China or getting things into China. China is importing a lot of steel and coal and things like that. So I think it is.
Talha Bhatty [00:30:19] Self reliance building like other countries are producing more or.
Lena [00:30:24] Yeah, yeah, production is moving a little bit out of China but not home producing. Some people say let’s produce everything ourselves in our own countries. For me in Sweden, I have a hard time believing that we can grow wine.
Talha Bhatty [00:30:41] Where lots of people are not going to be happy with that right now. Yeah, no, you’re right. You’re right. So what? So we’re going to have maybe like niches like China develops a niche that the wine producing countries have their niche. I was watching something about this New Zealand honey that sells for a hundred times more. They have their niche. Is it like that?
Lena [00:31:00] Yeah, but still, I mean, 90% of what you have around you has been on a keel at one point. I mean, we don’t I don’t know what you see when you look around, but maybe your desk was not made in, in the US or your boat maybe was not. So it’s all we are in a global business. It’s just a matter of, I think, collaborating to meet these challenges that we have.
Merrill Charette [00:31:24] So at one point we talked about obviously it sounds like there is a mindset shift, but what are some of the more significant challenges that are happening within shipping? You know, from what you’ve said thus far, it sounds like there’s a lot of small shipping companies that just don’t have the ability to make great leaps and just build new ships that are energy efficient. What happens to the old fleet? Like what challenges have you seen?
Lena [00:31:50] Well, I mean, there are companies who are rebuilding the old ships because then you can deliver that. But it all boils down to what regulations there are. I live in a part of the world where we had regulations about sulfur 1st of January 2015. I think we had that in this area because the politicians realized we cannot have ships polluting where there are a lot of people living because we have to breathe that air. So they decided that there should be less sulfur in what the ship was polluting. And then all the ship owners in this part of the world that is the sick area was from half of Norway to the British channel to the Baltic Sea. So it’s a big it’s a huge land, I would say. But then all the ship owners and the ports and everyone said, well, this cannot happen. We cannot, you know, how will that happen? And then they started to realize, well, maybe we will be the first ones in the world to do this. So they started testing out LNG as a as a fuel, and they started to think about how can we then bunker the few LNG and then they had to rethink all everything they did, but then they were became forerunners. They were supported by the EU, for instance. And EU also helps by putting up the infrastructure or helping countries and cities to put up the infrastructure, because if you change the fuel, you need to have the fuel somewhere so you can go there and bunker it. And all of a sudden they became forerunners for the rest of the world. And they still are. People are asking them about the L.A. what is that and how do you do that? And the engine manufacturers, they were all the forerunners at that time because the market was looking for LNG engines instead of the diesel engines or the old really bad ones. So I think it boils down to regulations that is hard when it comes to global business. It’s all the countries of the world that must agree on something, and that’s.
Talha Bhatty [00:33:56] One country is just more restrictive. The people just go somewhere else. Right. Yep.
Lena [00:34:01] Yeah. But also, I mean, if you’re sitting around the table, like in the IMO International Maritime Organization, that is a U.N. body in London. Every country that is represented, they need to find the what they can agree on. Some countries want more and some want less, but they have to find the middle way to agree on something. And that is the policy that everyone should live up to. On the other hand, you are allowed to be better than the people that the regulations. It’s not forbidden to be better, but then it’s the bottom line. You can’t go below that.
Talha Bhatty [00:34:36] And you’ve also been doing some other insurance. How over the years have you liquid, especially with so much talk about global warming and everything increasing over the last 20, 30 years, public insurance premiums and stuff like that, have they started absorbing it? They started getting super expensive now just because the oceans are crazier than ever. Is that true?
Lena [00:34:53] It was 20 years since I left the insurance industry. I got out.
Talha Bhatty [00:34:57] Before this craziness happened.
Lena [00:35:00] Yeah, before that. On the other hand, it has it must have an impact because the more technical things to put on a ship that you want to insure, the insurer wants to know what risk are they then carrying all the extra equipment if something happens or what happens if an LNG engine blows up? Is that worse than a diesel? I mean, so there’s so many things to consider as an insurer. And also, how big is the ship? Where can it go to be repaired? I mean, you need to know that as well. And spare parts. Where do you get that from?
Merrill Charette [00:35:34] So there’s obviously a ton of talk in all the different avenues of kind of renewable fuels, everything from hydrogen to electric to when to actual wind shipping vessels.
Talha Bhatty [00:35:50] Those are what we’re seeing. Yeah.
Merrill Charette [00:35:52] What seems to be like the most viable right now, because it seems like everyone is kind of just shooting off into all these different directions and there is no real clear winner of any of them.
Lena [00:36:04] No, you’re correct. No, but I think I think that’s a change of a mindset, because in the old days, this was one ship. I mean, if you go and buy a ship, you usually don’t buy one ship, but maybe order five or ten. But then you build the first ship and then you realize, oh, maybe I should change that, But then you change a little bit. So no ship is a light from the sun. The rest. So they are all different. It’s not like buying five or ten lorries because then you could just choose a different color and they are all the same. That’s a standard thing. But you need to come with your drawings to tell the shipyard this is what I want. So it’s totally different. In the old days, there was a ship. It was in steel. It was a certain, you know, centimeters or whatever you call it, in steel. And it was more like a one size fits all. But nowadays, I think shipowners are more starting to think, what trade am I going to? Because there’s a difference. If you’re trading between two cities, you can see the other the shore from where you’re standing. Then you can have electrical power. But it’s not the same to have electrical power if you’re trading over the Atlantic, that would be a little bit different. And it’s also got to do with where can you bunker your fuel even if you’re let’s say you are in the Baltic Sea? I don’t think there is any LNG bunker. Yeah, you can bunker that north of Stockholm but I mean you need to know if that is the trade. Where can I bunker and what can I buy. So then you need to know when you are planning for your ship, you need to plan for the trade. It’s going to go. And also where are you going to own your money or your money on that ship. So what kind of ship is it the role on envelope or is a passenger ship? Is it the cruise ship and the cruise ship that is closer to the consumer? So they have a bigger demand than the one may be carrying some other goods, some passengers. It’s different. So I would say, yes, you’re correct, it’s different. It’s all of the things. The forerunners are there. They’re trying it out, every one of them.
Talha Bhatty [00:38:11] Nice. So we can expect great things in the near future. Woo! The optimist. Lena speaks.
Lena [00:38:19] Yeah, but I speak to so many people who tell. Me this. So it has to be true.
Talha Bhatty [00:38:24] A lot of them are actively working on some of these angles. Yeah.
Lena [00:38:28] I did also an interview with Ocean Boat. That is, if you haven’t heard about the wind, the wind that they are going to use again now for ships, the needs of the.
Talha Bhatty [00:38:37] Coast coming back.
Lena [00:38:38] Ocean, ocean.
Talha Bhatty [00:38:40] Eco clipper last time.
Lena [00:38:41] It’s the same probably so that is valiant is it from Sweden and Laval from Sweden. They have a joint venture doing this. So interesting Hydrofoil ships. I have interviewed a guy, Joe Sandler. They are doing hydrofoil. It’s so interesting. Smaller ships, but then again doing passenger ships instead of the old steamships that is still used in the Stockholm archipelago.
Merrill Charette [00:39:06] Well, considering that we have you here, we might as well ask you on the service side of, you know, when it comes to like recreational boats, for instance, and even the superyacht industry, there is issues of getting people in to actually build the boats, slash, you know, service and maintain them. What’s that look like on the shipping side of the industry? Are there issues with getting people in, you know, to work on ships?
Lena [00:39:31] Cruise The honest answer is, I don’t know. But I think it’s large companies that is doing these services on these large ships. So it’s a little bit different. I think you need to be sort of recruiting people and making sure that you can deliver to your customers. I think you should listen to my interview with the Helium Med, which is from Volvo Penta. It’s a great interview and she’s really talking about the yachting and the little bit smaller industry. She used to be a ship owner in the in the big shipping industry before, and now she’s back up the Volvo and doing Volvo Penta. Really interesting.
Talha Bhatty [00:40:07] Well, I think what Mel’s alluding to is that even like these big established companies like Volvo Penta as a Yamaha just came up with like a brand new electric engine, they’re going to put it into boats. Okay. In fact, I think we’ve got like a deal with boatyards where you can boatyards can only put that engine in Newport to go and go into like all boats. So they’re going to take that as is going to sort of phase out in public slowly. And then because they like lots of people, the service I like many of the things, don’t know anything about it when it comes out. They’re just going to be like, Oh, this is new here. And so I think that even the volunteers of the world have like a sort of almost a responsibility to like, train the people downstream so that even these new moves that we’re making and hopefully they’re successful, let’s see what happens. But yeah, that’d be exciting to check out. So Lena on the way out or could you give us because again, you’ve got and maybe we’ll tackle them separately, but like give us like hopefully there’s a whole new wave of podcasters coming around. Okay. Mean it’d be like the top three tips for somebody looking to get into podcasting and, you know, make a solid career out of it and make his millions or millions. What can you give them?
Lena [00:41:17] I would listen to someone who could tell me that, Yeah, yeah, no, but. But to be a podcaster, you need to be patient because it takes so much longer than you think. And then you need to know. You need to have a business plan of your own. You need to really know your why, Why am I doing this? And it takes a word to get that straight for yourself. Why am I doing this? Because when you know why, then you know who your audience will be. Sort of, Who are you talking to? Yeah, you need a lot of time on your hands.
Talha Bhatty [00:41:56] But.
Lena [00:41:56] But I would really, I would say, yeah, I am a lib sim hosted podcast and lib sim is really, really good. They have been around for a long while. They have a YouTube channel. You can learn a lot how to do different things and I think they are a good hosting company because I upload my podcasts and I choose which channels they wanted to be in and then the system does it all for me. I don’t have to do a lot of chasing around doing this. Oh, I have to put it on Spotify or I have to put it on Amazon, I have to put it on Everwood. And then I think the next advice would be listen to some podcasts and take notes of what you like and what you don’t like and then do what you have put on your list that you’re like.
Merrill Charette [00:42:43] Well, I’m not done with my shipping questions, so.
Talha Bhatty [00:42:46] More shipping questions.
Merrill Charette [00:42:48] Yeah, yeah. So what is one of the more common misconceptions you’ve heard about shipping through your your time doing this?
Lena [00:42:57] Well, the problem is that I don’t hear anything because no one knows about us. I call this industry the Cinderella industry. No one knows what but the Cinderella. We do ever, you know, the fairytale Cinderella she doesn’t understand us, is cleaning, insisting everything, and then she’s invited to the ball. But. But we are in the background. It’s like I also worked with. With an. Association working with broadband. Well, you need broadband, otherwise you can’t get the connectivity and you can’t have all the self-driving cars and you can’t have anything, but you need the broadband. People don’t know about that either. Unless it doesn’t work, then they become like when a ship is stuck in the Suez Canal and nothing works, then people understand it. But as long as it works, no one knows about it. So I would say the the worst part is that no one knows about is and that is what I need, why I needed to start my podcast and my soapbox is I’ve been asking each and every one of my guests, how can we become more visible? How can we be more known to the general public? I have 220 episodes now. Maybe I have had five good answers, but people paid to spread the word about shipping and they don’t know how to do it. And that makes me sad because it’s not that hard, you know that.
Merrill Charette [00:44:21] Yeah, you know, I’ve we’ve seen some crazy ways of trying to create awareness. Like one time there was this presentation that this group gave and they’re like, Yeah, we’re we’re getting our name out to the general public by putting ads in trade only magazine. And I’m like, like people in the industry read that it’s not people outside of the industry. But getting into another question here, how do you think diversity and inclusion are shaping the shipping industry? Is it becoming more of a trend? I know that you said that you were doing 5050 on your podcast. How have you seen inclusion and diversity play out?
Lena [00:44:58] I have seen some forerunners in that part as well, signing a pledge to become diverse and inclusive. And I’ve also seen the work and I have also been part of it too. So the women in this industry and I think maybe the C-level people or the board people have realized, okay, so maybe we need to have the best people on board, not just the men.
Talha Bhatty [00:45:22] Hmm.
Lena [00:45:23] So I think it is it and I spoke yesterday with one woman who is the chief operating officer at Cargill, which is a very big trading company and ship owning company. And she said the young generation, they don’t want to work in your workplace unless you have a diversity and inclusion policy in place and that you are working, not just talking about it. You need to show them it’s okay to be anyone in our company.
Merrill Charette [00:45:50] And as you’ve mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of different growth and movements within the marine industry, whether it be new forms of power or technology. But you know, what are some of the bigger opportunities for growth within the shipping industry? If you were some person looking in like, Hey, I want to get in what is like untapped.
Lena [00:46:11] I can’t tell you. Then I would be in this thing. And it means that we’re still behind when it comes to connectivity. That is changing because the satellite companies are it’s getting cheaper in a way to connect connected and they get all the machine to machine and you get all of that. So as a bonus, also, the crew gets connected to home. I mean, that is what we all need. We all want a good working place. And what I was starting to say about the pandemic, I think it has put some light on what it’s like to be at sea, working and being away from home and being away from your family or things like that. So more emphasis on the seafarers and the working place, I think. So all the digital tools is coming in now from also to help the seafarers and also to help shipowners. But then again, I’m thinking of the other way around. I’m thinking, what shall we ship when all this fuel is, You know, we use oil for so many things, but it’s spent. And I would say 60% of everything that is shipped at sea is some kind of energy soybean oil and gasoline and coal and gas and all of that. So I’m thinking about that instead.
Merrill Charette [00:47:31] And kind of as our one of our final questions here, what in the next 10 to 20 years, what do you see the shipping industry or will we ever see in 10 to 20 years the first hydrogen shipping vessels across the ocean like what is on land?
Talha Bhatty [00:47:48] Yeah, what is possible?
Lena [00:47:51] If I was the CFO, I would be happy to have an unmanned ship over the Atlantic because then I wouldn’t have to be on board with the thick hydrogen. Yeah, that is. I don’t know. Some people say that that is a waste to use hydrogen. I wouldn’t stand for that because I’m not a technical person. But but I think we are about to come to zero emission. Yeah, I think I believe in that. People are working so hard to get that. And I mean, if you have the wind, yeah, it’s going to be combined with something else as the fuel could be a biofuel, could be methanol made from bio. And then you have the wind sails as well when the wind comes. So there’s a different I think that combination that us people have never before thought about, oh, maybe I could do it in another way. We’re so stuck in our own heads and stuck in our own culture, but it’s opening up now. And I think that the young people and the women are actually helping out to get this industry up and running again.
Talha Bhatty [00:48:56] Yeah, I bet. Because, you know, the funny thing is, is the shipping is one of the oldest professions in the world, I guess. Right. And and your head is it maybe it’s just sort of become stagnant because it’s just all men doing the same thing over and over again. Yeah. And now these young minds, women are coming in and like, Wait, but maybe we could do this this way? Yeah. Like these two things together.
Lena [00:49:18] From the beginning. I would think that if there was a crew on board a ship and one of the people, usually the captain went ashore and started his own shipping company, then he decided he wanted to employ the people that he had been working with because then he was still at the top. He was the captain, and that is how it worked. Also, they had family members come in, but then you don’t get any external input into it. I would say 20 years ago, something 20 Yeah. I saw the first employed CEO, which was didn’t have any shipping background or sailing backgrounds. So it’s a different way of looking at this. It’s more becoming more like every other business in a way which is good, but still we think it’s the best business.
Talha Bhatty [00:50:02] There is lots of fun all the time. Awesome. So any final thoughts you want to leave our listeners with anything to think about?
Lena [00:50:13] I think they should get to know more about the maritime industry because it’s such a cool industry and we are actually the backbone of global trade. Everything you see more or less has been on a keel sometime before you have it in your home. So go and listen to the shipping podcast.
Talha Bhatty [00:50:30] Oh yeah. Where can people check you out?
Lena [00:50:33] Well, shipping podcast dot com or on all different podcasting platforms that is shipping podcast.
Merrill Charette [00:50:41] Awesome Laina symbols. Great, great talking to you.
Lena [00:50:44] I had a great time. It wasn’t that hard to be a guest. I can tell my guests. It’s not hard at all. You just keep talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More for having me. Thank you for having me.
Farah [00:51:01] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to ship shaped up for.
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