The history of Rivium Chartering BV goes back to GenChart in the 70ties. GenChart VoF was a joint venture between Hoogovens steel works and shipowner Marinus Smits, who was one of the first shipowners who developed so-called geared boxshaped tweendeckers.
At that time the chartering department fixed (mainly coastal) relet cargoes, for which sometimes no Smits vessel was in position. Later, when the smaller Smits vessels 1000/3300 tdw) were sold, the cargoes from existing clients in that size were fixed in the market on competitive basis. Also non core business of Hoogovens, such as scrap, was often fixed by GenChart.
In the 90ties, GenChart developed a new building program of 8 MPP geared tweendeckers of 17.000 tdwt. At the same time the chartering department was re-organized into a ship owning / ship operating department and a fully independent competitive department, which more and more concentrated on project business and break bulk cargoes.
In 2003 GenChart was taken over by Beluga Shipping GmbH in Bremen and was renamed Beluga Chartering BV. In the beginning the situation of a separate ship owning / ship operating department and competitive chartering department remained the same.
About 3 years later all activities related to fixing the ships were concentrated in Bremen and Beluga Chartering BV in Rotterdam continued as independent chartering brokers and ship’s agents in all Dutch ports. Whilst all other Beluga branch offices were directly controlled by the head office in Germany, the Rotterdam office was the only a profit center in the Beluga group.
Early 2011 we were all surprised by the sudden discontinuity of the Beluga Group in Bremen and after considering various options Beluga Chartering BV, Rotterdam was liquidated and Henk van Efferen, Hans Schurr and Fons Uland decided to start a new independent brokerage office: Rivium Chartering BV.
As from April 2017 Henk van Efferen retired, so today Rivium Chartering BV is working with 2 brokers and is still concentrating on the same business as always i.e. project and dredging cargoes, break bulk and neo bulk cargoes.