Trends in Drybulk Trade and Shipping

US Educated. 15 years experience in Shipbroking and Freight Trading in Paris, Singapore and Switzerland. Speaks French, Spanish and Potuguese.

Mr. George D. Gourdomichalis was born in 1967 in London.
He attended Athens College and went on to graduate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a BA in International Economics and a BA in Political Science.
He further earned an MSc in Ocean Marine Transportation Management from the Maritime Academy of the State of New York.
In 1989 he joined Republic National Bank of New York as a management trainee and worked on their trading floor. In 1992 he joined S.S. Maritime Inc. of New York, where he worked as a chartering and S&P broker and was responsible for commercial management of Baltmed Shipping Co.
In 1996 he returned to Greece and co-founded Gourdomichalis Naftiki Eteria S.A. In 2000 he co-founded Free Ships S.A. and in 2003 he co-founded Free Bulkers S.A. These activities were consolidated and in 2005 were successfully merged resulting in the public listing of FreeSeas Inc. on the NASDAQ Exchange. This shareholding was sold in January 2007 where upon he co-founded G. Bros Maritime S.A., he is currently CEO of Blue Wall Shipping and Phoenix Shipping & Trading S.A. George serves on the RINA Hellenic Committee, the Board of Directors of the American P&I Club and the Industry Advisory Board of the North American Merchant Ministries Association, he is President of the Board of Directors of the Piraeus Marine Club, member of the British Hellenic Chamber of Commerce responsible for the shipping industry, member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Chamber of Shipping and member of the Baltic Exchange.

Martijn has ~20 years of experience managing and developing logistics assets and commodity supply chains. Having held senior executive roles for BHP, Trafigura/Impala and Nyrstar, he lived in The Netherlands, Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Switzerland. By having managed large size organisations with branches in 80+ countries, he obtained a truly global view on trends, best practices and feasibilities.

Currently he is residing in The Hague, as co-founder of logistics infrastructure investment firm Olmar (acquiring, developing and managing large dry bulk focused terminals, vessels and railways from blue chip industrials/traders, backed by institutional investors).

Furthermore, he provides strategic advise on topics like shipping, logistics and general management to large mining companies, metal processors, leading supply chain optimization software suppliers, shipping companies, PE & VC firms, and hedge funds.

Andrew Wilson is the Head of Energy Research at Barry Rogliano Salles (BRS) shipbroker in Paris, France. Although he coordinates the company’s research across the whole energy spectrum, his specialties are oil and tanker markets. He is the editor of Alphatanker, a suite of weekly and monthly publications jointly produced by BRS and AXSMarine. Before joining BRS in 2016, Andrew was a Senior Oil Market Analyst at the International Energy Agency. There he was co-author of the Agency’s benchmark Monthly and Medium-Term Oil Market Reports. During this time he was responsible for the prices, crude trade and oil inventories analysis in these reports while also being the IEA’s expert on tanker markets, midstream infrastructure developments and bunker fuels with a particular interest in the Former Soviet Union. Andrew began his career in 2005 as an analyst at BP. He is regularly quoted on newswires and in international trade publications and is a regular speaker on oil and tanker markets at international conferences. He holds a doctorate from the University of Exeter, UK.

Kostas is a professional with 20 years of experience. His current areas of interest include sustainability, ESG, and innovation. His work has been focusing on maritime policy matters and the shipping industry's environmental soundness, decarbonisation, operational and energy efficiency.

He has been Director and Secretary General of INTERCARGO since 2016, during which time the Association’s Membership has more than doubled to over 25% (basis deadweight) of the global dry bulk fleet, bringing together some 220 companies from 30 countries promoting quality dry bulk shipping.

He holds a PhD in Maritime Transport from the National Technical University of Athens - NTUA (Laboratory for Maritime Transport, School of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering), a M.Sc. in International Business (Manchester School of Management, UMIST) and a M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering with specialisation in energy (NTUA).