HGK will be managing its push boat shipping activities from the Dutch port city of Rotterdam from 1 October 2025 onwards. The Duisburg business site has handled this task in the past. In making this switch, the company is aiming to intensify the cooperation between its two branches and increase the efficiency of its transport processes.

Jos Davidse is taking over as manager of the push boat shipping operations at the start of the 4th quarter in 2025. As a result, Andreas Lemme, the Managing Director of HGK Dry Shipping, is handing over this part of the company’s dry shipping operations to the experienced logistics manager. Jos Davidse had joined Europe’s largest inland waterway shipping company at the beginning of the year and became part of the management team at HGK Shipping Rotterdam from 1 January 2025 onwards.

As a central hub for the international movement of goods, Rotterdam is also particularly important for the transport operations organised by HGK Shipping on inland waterways. Goods arriving from all over the world are fed into the European continent’s inland waterway system through Europe’s largest seaport. And the same process applies to goods making their way to ships travelling to America, Asia or Africa in the opposite direction.

The push boat shipping operations at HGK Dry Shipping play a crucial role in supplying the steel and chemical industries along the Lower Rhine river. “By relocating this divisional task to Rotterdam, we’re laying the foundation for organising our services in this important transport segment in an even more efficient and future-oriented manner,” Jos Davidse explains; he will have overall responsibility for push boat shipping operations at HGK Dry Shipping in future.

The ideal choice at this important business site

Before moving to HGK Shipping Rotterdam, Jos Davidse worked in management positions at renowned companies within the shipping sector, most recently as Senior General Manager at thyssenkrupp Veerhaven. “Alongside optimising our internal processes, we can now offer our transport solutions to our regular customers in an even more targeted way. This will, firstly, be feasible through relocating our push boat shipping activities from Duisburg to Rotterdam and, secondly, by appointing Jos Davidse as the General Manager for this operating division of HGK Dry Shipping. His extensive sector expertise, combined with a deep understanding of operational processes and commercial requirements, makes him the ideal choice for this job,” says Steffen Bauer, the CEO of HGK Shipping, underlining the importance of the company’s restructuring process in its business context.