02.05.2024 | Press release

Maria Schippers strengthens HGK Shipping’s growth ambitions in a new position

Duisburg, 2 May 2024 – Europe’s leading inland waterway shipping company, HGK Shipping, is boosting its strategic corporate development even further. Maria Schippers is taking over the newly created position of Director Corporate Development & New Markets with effect from 1 May and will be an authorised signatory for HGK Shipping GmbH. This pays tribute to her great level of commitment and her readiness to assume responsibility for the company. Maria Schippers will press ahead with the ongoing development of the business activities at HGK Shipping in her new role.

Maria Schippers, the Director Corporate Development & New Markets and authorised signatory at HGK Shipping, will press ahead with the company’s development. (Copyright: HGK Shipping)

The new position will build on the experience that Maria Schippers has gained in her previous role as the Head of Group Projects and Digitisation since the end of 2020. She will increasingly focus on strategic projects that need to be processed in future to align the company with establishing and expanding new supply chains and the opportunities created by them. In addition, she will concentrate on the company’s strategic growth and development possibilities as a result of cooperation arrangements, partnerships and acquisitions as well as positioning HGK Shipping in new markets. She will therefore promote the strategic development of new business fields as part of the energy transformation and decarbonisation process together with Steffen Bauer, the CEO of HGK Shipping.

After gaining her university degree, Maria Schippers acquired a great deal of expertise in the field of contract and chemical logistics at LEHNKERING and Imperial Logistics in the past decade. At HGK Shipping, she was responsible for group projects and establishing the portfolio of services for the inland waterway shipping company – always keeping a strategic focus in a world that is becoming increasingly digital. After she played a leading role in the sale of Imperial Logistics’ inland waterway shipping division to the HGK Group in 2020, Maria Schippers was also responsible for the corporate acquisition of the operational tank container logistics business of Köppen last year and the sale of the HGK Shipping shares in DGA Shipping this spring.

"Her passion for this area of responsibility and her outstanding ability to tackle complex challenges and develop innovative solutions make her an extremely valuable addition to our management team,” says CEO Steffen Bauer, giving his reasons for this personnel decision. “Her strategic expertise, particularly in bringing forward-looking new vessel construction concepts on to the market, such as our recently introduced ‘Pioneer’ project, a vessel for the energy revolution to transport cold liquefied ammonia and LCO2, is invaluable for HGK Shipping’s ambitious growth plans.”