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Bunker Index recently carried out a phone interview with Henrik Zederkof, Managing Director of A/S Dan-Bunkering, where he speaks about the launch of the company's office in Singapore, its 'focus area' strategy in Southern Asia and the company's recruitment and training policy.

BI: Dan-Bunkering has developed an annual bunker trader training programme and set up its own academy. The company also appears to have been recruiting quite a lot over the past 12-15 months. Could you tell us how this all fits in with the company's overall strategy ?

HZ: At Dan-Bunkering we need well educated traders. We have a lot already in the pipeline, but if it takes three to four years to train them, what we have recruited over the past last year we still have perhaps three years before they are fully trained.

So what we are doing now is we are preparing for the future, which we have always done. We have always had a lot of people training at Dan-Bunkering, and most of them if not all are still at Dan-Bunkering and within our group, which is a good signal that what we do also stays with us.

BI: So would you say your employees are generally happy and that you have a low staff turnover ?

HZ: Yes, We have a lot of people at Dan-Bunkering that have been here all their professional life. You start with them, you train them, you spend a lot of years on them and then they stay with you for a long time. We have people that have been here for 30 years at Dan-Bunkering.

I think it says something about a company and a company's culture that you can keep people for such a long period, especially in a market today where a lot of other businesses have more of a "sacking" culture where you shift jobs more often.

I think we should be proud that we have maintained a status where most of the people choose to stay with us for a long time.

BI: Would you agree that it's true of the industry in general ?

HZ: Yes it's a very loyal industry in many ways. A lot of people also in the other companies in the bunker industry have done the same. I think of course it has to do with the company itself, but also the bunker industry is a very exciting industry. You get challenged a lot of times each day and if you are in for a challenge you should be in the bunker industry.

Earlier this year Dan-Bunkering revealed its strategy of dividing its sales teams into 'supplier focus areas', could you tell us more about this ?

We have actually done this for many years. We have had five focus teams running for the last four years with great success. So the last team that we have here is actually an additon to the already existing areas.

We are going into the Indian area and again it fits very well into Dan Bunkering's "global but local" statement where we are a global company but with a local presence and local knowledge. We start off with the local knowledge and we are quite sure that by having the local knowledge you can add value to the full trading chain.

We have seen that in the past. Our first focus area was in China and suddenly we opened an office in China. Then we had a focus area for Russia and we opened an office in Russia, and so the story goes. It has been a way of developing the business, all in line with Dan-Bunkering's global but local statement.

BI: Do you have a next target and would you be able to provide us with some details ?

HZ: No, it's difficult right now to comment on that. We do actually have something but its very difficult in this market to know "is this a real market"? to justify opening an office there or not.

We are constantly looking at it. We do of course have plans but as you know we opened the office in Singapore on 1st May. We had a very good start out there - it has exceeded our expectations and we forecast an increase for that office both in volume and earnings in the future.

Of course, if you launch a new office in the most competitive and largest bunker market in the world, in Singapore, you have to do a little bit of homework first. But still we were very surprised by the very good start we got - as it surpassed our expectations - and by people in the market acknowledging that we could add some value both on the supply and on the buyer side.

To be honest if we don't do it on both sides we dont add value. It has to be all the way through with the professionalism and knowledge that we have.

BI: Does Dan-Bunkering's strategy in Singapore also include becoming a physical supplier in the future in order to add more value to customers ?

HZ: So far we are not looking at becoming suppliers in Singapore. We strongly believe in our current business model where we want to be global but local, and we want to be the preferred trading partner for customers.

Therefore it should not be necessary for further suppliers to be entering the market. I think it could be negative to have too many suppliers there, but on the other hand, so far we are not suppliers in Singapore, we are always looking at options of course but we are not actively seeking it right now.