Variety’s the spice of life in Port Operations

Christian Schmekal has been working for NYK since 1997, when he began his career in our Hamburg office as an apprentice trainee.  After three and a half years in Frankfurt’s customer services import and inside sales departments he returned to Hamburg mid-2003, where he has been working as a member of the Port Operations team ever since.

 

With Port Operations, Christian has a variety of tasks; dealing with Dangerous Goods, specialist and reefer containers; taking care of linking containers with customer bookings and arranging empty shipments. He says the ultimate goal is to ensure all container units booked by customers are loaded successfully each time a vessel calls at the port of Hamburg.

A smaller but no less significant part of his job is husbandry, which is about catering for the different needs of the crew of each vessel that calls in Hamburg and dealing with the port authorities, immigration and harbour police and the pilots.  One minute he could be involved in arrangements for bunkering or supplying the crew’s fresh water supplies; the next, being sent out to organise doctor’s appointments, buy light bulbs, or on one occasion, to buy a pullover for a crew member.  As he wasn’t sure of the difference between German and international sizes, it ended up being a little too tight.

He says he feels lucky to be doing his job because he enjoys the variety and is never bored.  The challenge of problem-solving keeps him on his toes.  Not least, he enjoys working outside with the vessels, even in all weathers, at all hours of day, night, weekday or weekend.

Outside his work, he spends a lot of time as a volunteer for the fire brigade which he joined in 1993.  He trains every other week and is occasionally on duty for calls.  He can be called in to fight a fire, or, as in 2003, be called to help with a rescue operation after severe flooding in Dresden.  Christian is also the German correspondent for West of Suez, a quarterly newsletter for NYK staff in our European Offices.  We keep him busy!

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