Famous Pacific Shipping restructures top management

In Macau, at the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the Famous Pacific Shipping Group (FPS Group), delegates agreed to a restructuring of the Asia-based NVOCC and freight forwarding network’s senior management team.

The previous constitution of the FPS Group has been re-written and the Group Executive Committee has been replaced by a newly elected Advisory Board to provide governance to the Group.

The new Board is chaired by Kettivit Sittisoontornwong, FPS Logistics (Thailand), who is joined by Michele Dougal, FPS Brisbane; Jens-Ole Holmager, Team Freight Denmark; Gihan Nanayakkara, FPS Sri Lanka; and, Alfred Steinen, FS Mackenzie UK.

This year’s AGM started on a rousing note! Determined to project an up-beat message to staff, clients and the competition, FPS Group members who had gathered in Macau, began the four-day event with a rendition of the classic Queen song We Are The Champions with lyrics reflecting FPS’ core business of freight handling.

The event’s opening evening cocktail party was graced by the presence of senior managers from 18 of the world’s largest container shipping companies.

In addition to agreeing the transformation of the Group’s leadership from an Executive Committee to an Advisory Board, new member companies of the FPS network were welcomed at the AGM, which also provided invaluable networking opportunities.

The AGM, being held 10 years after the inaugural meeting of the network in Rotterdam in 1999, saw many new agents who have joined the Group in the last year introduce themselves. These included new general agents from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Canada, Spain, UAE and Germany. This brings membership of the Group up to 70 companies from 51 countries.

Some 125 participants travelled to Macau to take part in one of the highlights of the four-day event: one-to-one meetings between member companies of the FPS Group. This year, 1,531 individual meetings were organised, an incredible increase on the 600 held in 2006; 645 in 2007 and 1,325 in 2008.

Delegates were informed that the 2010 AGM is to be hosted in Dalian, China by FPS Dalian.

Members heard the out-going Executive Committee chairman, Iskandar Zulkarnain from PT FPS Indonesia, stepping down after two and a half years at the head of the Committee, paint an upbeat picture of prospects for 2010.

Concluding his review, which included welcoming the new Advisory Board, Mr Zulkarnain demonstrated the spirit that is helping the Group survive the downturn: “We cannot control the wind but we can adjust the sail,” he said.