M.L. Chandchutha Chandratat 

Managing Director
Thoresen Thai Agencies Plc


"A significant part of the Thoresen Group's medium-term strategy is to ensure that our various businesses are managed in a more professional, transparent, and profit-oriented manner. Our dry bulk shipping business, which is our largest one, was selected to work on various business improvement projects to achieve the above objective.

The global economic recession at the end of 2008 only highlighted the need for the Thoresen Group to be a more commercially minded organization. In particular, demand for our dry bulk shipping services fell dramatically as world trade declined. We simply did not have the
management tools and disciplines required at all levels to consistently utilize our capacity and other resources most effectively.

Now that the Management Control System implementation project by Sydney Consulting has been completed, I wish to formally say thank you for the successful work, completed at the end of July, which was done with the dry bulk shipping business. The dry bulk shipping business is better equipped with a well-thought out and communicated set of tools, which should enable managers to plan and schedule vessel capacity utilization more accurately and to better control its use of resources of all types across the whole operation.

In addition to the positive work done at the front end, forecasting and planning, significant work was also accomplished at the hands-on, on-board level. A team of Sydney Consulting consultants concentrated on designing and implementing control tools for on-board use and trained six vessels before the project ended. While the work on forecasting and planning required a sophisticated approach to the business, the on-board implementation required a design that matched the conditions for use in that environment. The highly streamlined control elements exactly and effectively matched the on-board environment.

The project, as we knew it would, presented a range of challenges. There were existing related projects already running which required a collaborative approach by Sydney Consulting. A number of key executive roles were unfilled during substantial portions of the project. There was definitely resistance to an approach requiring a greater level of control and scrutiny within some areas of the business. These challenges were were effectively managed by Sydney Consulting and the executive team. In fact, the Sydney Consulting team was unrelenting in its focus on meeting the needs of the project.

Through the development and implementation of the MCS, Thoresen's dry bulk shipping business has improved its capacity utilization, reduced fuel consumption, and increased effectiveness in repairs and maintenance expenditures.

Finally, completion of the project with Sydney Consulting has afforded our executive and dry bulk operating teams considerably more insight and control into our business; insight that without Sydney Consulting's assistance would have taken considerably longer to attain, and likely without the same level of consistency and completeness in implementation".