Tschudi's quest for more cost efficient transport

Technical and operational changes of the late 1960s were referred to as a “shipping revolution".

The main driver was the quest for cost efficient transport, particularly for cargo handling. All this contributed to lower freight costs, which again stimulated global trade.

This was exactly what Captain Henry F. Tschudi had been looking at - the possiblity of being able to carry wet and dry cargoes on the same ship.

He had considered grain transport in tankers, but instead came to focus on the OBO carrier – a vessel capable of carrying Oil, Bulk and Ore cargoes. Orders for OBOs were placed – two were delivered in 1968 and the third one in 1969.

We were again among the pioneers in a new market segment.

The first OBOs in the fleet were named Siboen, Siboto and Sibotre. The names all had the similar prefix “Si” which was first used on Silvaplana in 1938 (the vessels would be listed alphabetically together in all ships registers) “bo” – an abbreviation for OBO followed by the number of the vessel (in Norwegian en, to, tre).

By 1995, we were operating a fleet of 9 new OBOs delivered from the Burmeister & Wain shipyard in Copenhagen. We had now acquired an excellent track record for building and managing these vessels. This was the basis for listing, the special purpose company Tschudi & Eitzen operating 16 tankers and OBOs, on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 1995.

‍