MYS 19: TWW's Rapid Rise

A successful year as Managing Director saw Hein Velema named as new CEO and Partner of the brokerage. The Dutch born Velema amassed a wealth of experience at Feadship, ISA and Fraser before joining TWW where he made an instant impact on the company’s growth. Peter Thompson said of the appointment “What we needed in the company was somebody to take control, the three original partners were very charter/sales oriented and we needed somebody to look at the company growth. We started off with 4 or 5 people and now we’re significantly larger and we need to make all of that work.”

Hein Velema is adamant that the growth TWW has experience stems from within the organisation itself. “It is not really the market,” affirmed Hein, “it is because we are a young company that we are growing, the whole company is double the size of last year. What we see is a big growth but it is more to us than the whole market.”

While the company is embarking on a rapid journey, Hein is eager to ensure that TWW do not lose the core value of client attention that has helped fuel this rise. “We are still growing although we are also quite careful there. By now we have all the services… so we can deliver the full service and we still think we can grow further, but there is a limit as we don’t want it to become impersonal.”

Peter Thompson says the brokerage has identified an area that offers a lot of opportunity in the market. “There is a hole in ther market for vessels from 55 to 80 metres,” says Thompson. “There are a lot of people looking for that size, so we are constantly on the hunt for those as they come up. One sale I recently did, a 73m boat came on the market on the Friday and was under contract on the Saturday. There’s a high demand that makes that section interesting.”

Around the Monaco Yacht Show 2019, TWW will be exhibiting 8 yachts for guests to admire, and potentially inquire. The largest of those yachts is Sarah; a 62 metre superyacht built by Dutch shipyard Amels in 2002, and has recently undergone a refit in 2016.