In a ceremony held in Madrid, the chairman of Boluda Corporación Marítima took up his appointment after a speech on “The Boluda family’s commitment to towing services and contribution to safety in the maritime sector”
The reply speech was given by former Defence Minister Eduardo Serra
The company ranks second internationally in port towage, with a total of 271 tugboats
Boluda Corporación Marítima Chairman Vicente Boluda Fos officially became a full member of the Real Academia de la Mar (Royal Academy of the Sea) at an event held on 13 December in Madrid, with the speech “The Boluda family’s commitment to towing services and contribution to safety in the maritime sector”.
Held at the Spanish Institute of Engineering and chaired by the President of the Royal Academy Alejandro Aznar, the event was attended by close to a hundred people, including almost all the senior executives of Boluda Corporación Marítima, Boluda Towage and Salvage, Boluda Lines and Boluda Tankers. Among the most recognisable faces were the Madrid-based nightlife entrepreneur Pedro Trapote, and Amador Suárez, chairman of Amasua, SA, a holding company dedicated to fishing and fishery products since the 60’s.
In his acceptance speech as a full member Vicente Boluda gave a detailed account of his family history: closely linked to the sea and committed during four generations to defending the interests and security of the maritime sector, both in Spain and abroad.
The maritime corporation came about from the union of two families linked to the sea: his paternal grandfather Vicente Boluda Marí’s tugboat company, Remolcadores Boluda, founded in 1920, and Naviera Fos, founded in 1837 by his maternal family.
“The result of this merger,” he said, “is today one of the leading groups in global maritime services. Boluda Corporación Marítima operates today in 95 ports, with offices in five continents, and is the second company in the world in port towage, with 271 tugboats”.
After providing an comprehensive review of the technological changes that Boluda tugboats have seen over the last nearly one hundred years, the Boluda Corporación Marítima chairman highlighted that through the Boluda France subsidiary, the company has been providing port, coastal and offshore towing services since 2007 in six ports of France; in seven ports on the west coast of Africa located in Morocco, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Togo and Mauritania; and in three port facilities located in the Indian Ocean: the Mayotte and Reunion Islands (overseas departments of France) and the island of the Republic of Mauritius. Similarly, through the subsidiary Boluda América towing services are offered in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Haiti, and through Boluda Deutschland, following the acquisition of the company Urag, in six ports in Germany.
During his speech Vicente Boluda elaborated that from the time his paternal grandfather began his entrepreneurial journey with a small alternative steam engine tugboat, “in just over a century since this company was founded, through four generations, there has been the greatest technological evolution in the history of navigation,” he stated.
“This is because we have adapted at all times to the highest safety standards required in port and ocean-going towage, which has resulted in a large multinational division, Boluda Towage and Salvage, currently made up of 25 towing services companies in Spain; 28 in France, the west coast of Africa and the Indian Ocean; 4 in Germany and 23 in America, ” he added.
Boluda concluded his speech by underlining that “we have become sector leaders in Spain, and the second largest port towing operators in the international arena. We have a total of 271 tugs, 76 operating in Spain and 195 throughout the world, and our priority is to continue modernizing the fleet and implementing sustainable policies on energy efficiency, comfort and safety”.
The reply to Vicente Boluda’s acceptance speech as a full member of the Royal Academy was given by former Defense Minister Eduardo Serra.
