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Captain on Shore

Article from NORDEN News

It began by coincidence, but ended up as a career path. Having been posted at shipyards in Korea, Japan and China for more than nine years, Niels Jørgen Iversen has been one of NORDEN’s most well-known faces in Asia - and one of the employees launching the most of NORDEN’s vessels. But a new chapter is about to start for him, back in Denmark. At the beginning of the new year, Niels Jørgen Iversen will hand in his discharge book and retire. This is his story of a long, varied career with NORDEN.

Under distant skies

“It was something of a coincidence that I started supervising newbuildings,” explains Niels Jørgen Iversen, who trained as an engineer and was employed by NORDEN in 1986. “For the first three years of my employment with NORDEN, I was chief engineer of m.t. NORDTRAMP. We traded in tropical waters, and were in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. Then, suddenly, in 1990 I was given the opportunity to go to Hyundai Shipyard in Ulsan, Korea to supervise the building of the Capesize bulkcarriers NORD-ENERGY and NORD POWER and to experience daily life under distant skies. We had to give it a try, and my wife, Kristine, and I settled in Korea for almost a year”, he continues.

Enormous challenge

“This stay gave us a good idea of what living abroad is like, and it was a huge experience for us both. But it was also an enormous challenge, professionally. As NORDEN’s representative at the shipyard, I and the rest of the team are responsible for supervising the various phases of the vessels’ production. Will it be built in accordance with specifications? Will the schedule hold, and is the quality as expected? There was a lot to follow up on. In the early 1990s, Korea was a very young shipbuilding nation, which had far less experience in shipbuilding and project management than countries such as Denmark and Japan had at the time, and which Korea has achieved today”, he explains.

Sixteen vessels launched

When both vessels had been completed in the spring of 1991, Niels Jørgen and others sailed NORD POWER back to Denmark, and he spent the rest of the year as chief engineer aboard this vessel. Since his time at Hyundai Shipyard in Korea, he has launched a further fourteen of NORDEN’s newbuildings and spent a total of eight more years in Japan, Korea and China. In 1992 followed a brief stay at Shin Kurushima Dockyard in Japan. This shipyard had already launched the Aframax tanker SKAUNORD, but the fi nal adjustments and most of the fittings had to be supervised. Niels Jørgen Iversen was given this assignment. Originally, he was to have been chief engineer aboard the vessel in its planned bareboat charter operation, but SKAUNORD ended up in time charter, manned by the shipowners themselves. For the next five years, Niels Jørgen was instead chief engineer on the Capesize bulkers NORD-ENERGY and NORD POWER. In 1997, he also worked as chief engineer on NORD FAST and NORD-ENERGY. When NORD-ENERGY called at a port in South Africa toward the end of that year, he was asked to go to Ulsan, Korea for another shipyard assignment at the Hyundai Shipyard. This time, he was to supervise the finishing work on the Aframax tanker NORDASIA. Assignment completed, Niels Jørgen sailed NORDASIA to China and back to Korea, and subsequently stayed on as chief engineer for two voyages. Since then, shipbuilding has been the order of the day.

In the Japanese countryside

From 1999 to the beginning of 2001, Niels Jørgen and Kristine were at the Oshima shipyard in Japan. This shipyard is located far from the beaten path in the south-western corner of Japan, between Nagasaki and Sasebo. Here, Niels Jørgen and Kristine became good friends with many locals and learned to appreciate Japanese nature, culture and food – including “sashimi” (raw fish) and “sushi” (which really means rice cake, but which in our culture has become synonymous with “raw fish”). They also became familiar with the custom of kneeling at dinner in restaurants, although it got harder with age to get up again, as Niels Jørgen explains. At the Oshima shipyard, Niels Jørgen supervised the building of three Handymax bulkcarriers. NORDEN itself acquired NORD CECILIE (delivered in August 2000), while the two other vessels were delivered directly to a Greek shipping company.

Read much more about Niels Jørgen Iversen's experiences in the original article from NORDEN News Magazine. (link side 10+11 vinter 2006 eng)