Ocean Group plc

Ocean Group plc was a major British transport business. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

History

The company was founded by Alfred and Philip Holt, as the Ocean Steamship Company, to provide a steamship service known as the Blue Funnel Line, between the United Kingdom and China.^[1] It was generally known as Holts and had a trademark blue funnel on its ships.^[1] For many years it used Swire Group as it shipping agents.^[1] In 1947 it formed Malayan Airways.^[1]

It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1965.^[1] In 1969 it joined forces with British & Commonwealth Holdings, Furness Withy and P&O to form Overseas Containers Limited to exploit the introduction of containerization.^[1] In 1972 it acquired William Cory, a major shipping agent, and the following year, it changed its name to Ocean Transport & Trading.^[1] In 1986 it withdrew Overseas Containers Limited and in 1990 it renamed itself Ocean Group.^[1]

In 2000 it merged with NFC plc to form Exel plc.^[2]

Group Members

A major restructuring exercise occurred in 1967 whereby all of the Ocean Steam Ship Company’s fleet operations were divided amongst 4 companies, each of which answered to the main board of the Ocean Steam Ship Company. The 4 fleet operating companies were: -

• Blue Funnel Line
• Elder Dempster
• Glen Line Limited
• Nederlandsche Stoomvaart Maatschappij Oceaan

Subsidiaries and Subsequent Acquisitions

• Seaway Car Transporters Limited were a wholly owned subsidiary of Elder Dempster
• Guinea Gulf Line – formerly the John Holt Line - was acquired by Elder Dempster in 1965
• Palm Line was acquired in 1984

References

Further reading

• E.J. Gubbins. Managing Transport Operations. Kogan Page. ISBN 0-7494-3928-9.