Wilh. Wilhelmsen
Wilh. Wilhelmsen ASA is a global shipping company. Morten Wilhelm Wilhelmsen founded the company on 1 October 1861 in Tønsberg. Today it has its corporate headquarters in Lysaker. The company is run by CEO Ingar Skaug at the time. The annual turnover in 2008 was about 3.4 billion U.S. dollars, the profit was $ 352 million. The company employs approximately 6,000 employees in the country about 400 offices in 73 countries. In addition to the actual shipping business businesses for car and ro-ro logistics and maritime services are operated. Wilh. Wilhelmsen had developed with the Orcelle a design for a cargo ship that was to use wind power, solar power and wave power as a drive.
Core business
The shipping business of Wilh. Wilhelmsen ASA focuses on the envelope of rolling items such as cars, trucks, agricultural machinery, and other ro-ro cargo with one of the largest fleets of car carriers and ro-ro ships. This includes nearly 120 owned and chartered ships that are used, among other things, on the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines, Eukor and American Roll- on Roll -off Carrier. The annual transport volume comprises about 5 million vehicles and 12 million cubic meters of non-containerized cargo.
Incidents at sea
In August 2001, the shipping company fell due to a diplomatic dispute between the governments of Australia, Norway and Indonesia on the whereabouts of 433 refugees aboard the Tampa in the headlines. On 14 December 2002, the cruise line ship Tricolor sank after a collision with the container ship Kariba in the English Channel.
Plane crash
On September 8, 1989 Partnair Flight 394 crashed off on his flight from Oslo to Hamburg. All 55 people on board, 50 employees of the cruise line and 5 crew members were killed. The machine, the Convair CV -580 had been chartered by the cruise line and should bring people to a naming ceremony in Hamburg. The aircraft crashed near the town of Hirtshals off the Danish coast in the Skagerrak. By this fall, the shipping company partly executives lost at a stroke fifty.