The Many Actors of Breakbulk’s Story

By Janet Nodar

A good conference, like a good story, has at its core a plotline that pulls everything together and creates coherence and momentum. For Breakbulk Events & Media, that core is its VIP Shippers.

Who are they? “Cargo owners, for the most part. Those responsible for acquiring, or directing to be acquired, whatever goods and services are needed to build a given project,” explained Elizabeth Wetzel, Breakbulk’s education manager. “These are the people who buy everything our exhibitors sell, directly, or indirectly through their forwarders, agents, chartering companies – and I really mean everything.” Until this spring, Wetzel ran Breakbulk’s VIP Shipper Club, in addition to managing Breakbulk’s Education Day and workshops and assisting with conference programming. Before joining Breakbulk’s staff in 2010, Wetzel was an executive in the shipping industry and an educator in logistics and transportation.

Although Breakbulk’s VIP Shippers are at the center of Breakbulk’s story, they are not necessarily easy to spot. Key logistics and procurement executives, they may work for engineering, procurement and construction firms, original equipment manufacturers, construction firms, oil and gas majors or oil and gas service providers. These companies build or participate in the construction of multimillion or multibillion-dollar projects for governments, national oil companies, national and global manufacturers, joint ventures and other entities. Moving the often very complex, large, expensive, heavy and/or out-of-gauge project cargo needed for these projects is a complicated, nerve-wracking, niche business, and is the specialty of those who dwell in the breakbulk world. This is not retail; the job is never the same twice, and it is as far from commodified as it gets.

The level of industry knowledge in Breakbulk’s VIPs is extremely high, Wetzel said, which is why she relies on them as teachers for Breakbulk’s Education Day program, workshops and new micro-seminars. “Most of it does not come from textbooks,” Wetzel said. “It’s from experience.”

Dennis Mottola, corporate traffic and logistics process owner, manager with Bechtel, has been a part of Breakbulk since the conference first began back in the 1980s. Breakbulk was then focused on dry bulks, lumber, steel and industrial cargoes rather than project cargo. Mottola has taught and presented at Breakbulk events many times, and been a member of the VIP Shipper Club since its inception six years ago. He cares deeply about sharing his professional experience with younger generations in the industry.

“The best teachers are the ones that have been there and done it, and can put together a message sharing their experience. They can focus it on what they would have liked to have been taught [when they were] just starting in the industry. I’d have made a lot fewer mistakes. I feel it’s so important to get in front of students and provide them with some lessons learned,” he said.

Mottola sees Breakbulk as a channel for opening the door to a new generation of industry members, particularly since Breakbulk’s teachers and presenters are subject matter experts. “You get in front of the students and tell them about the opportunities in our area of business; it’s an exciting story.” The highly technical aspects, the travel, the mega-projects. The budgets. “Think about that,” he said: on projects that are worth billions, “the freight spend will be a quarter-billion, a half-billion. You talk to somebody coming out of college and tell them that they might be on a team that’s going to manage US$300 million, US$400 million in logistics spend – that’s pretty exciting.”

A Forum For Industry

Margaret Vaughan, manager of traffic and logistics and export compliance for Wood Mustang Group, has also been part of Breakbulk’s VIP Shipper club since it began. She considers Breakbulk a wonderful forum for being heard and for contributing to the industry, for herself and for her team.

“We can trade our body of knowledge and pass it on. That’s why I really enjoy Education Day. Most of what we do, you can’t go to school for. It’s unique and takes a long time to learn. A lot of students don’t even understand that project logistics is an option. It’s different from what anybody else does. It’s nail-biting at times. It can even make you queasy. It’s never the same,” she said.

Breakbulk provides one of the few broad-based opportunities to introduce new people to the project transportation industry, and also provides an educational service to midstream and higher levels of the community, said Greg Gowans, director of logistics and expediting with CH2M Hill and long-time Breakbulk VIP and attendee. “I participate in it because I see a role for myself, in my place in my career and my company, to assist in this effort that you are championing.”

Breakbulk’s diversity and breadth of programming expands the experience at multiple levels, and provides value to a broader stream across the industry, said Gowans. The VIP Shipper Club also performs a distinct function, he said, aligning the shippers as a community within the conference venue. The shippers benefit from being identified as a group. The club promotes networking and creates a collegial, fraternal atmosphere, he said.

Alex Azparrent, Fluor’s global director of logistics operations, has served as a keynote speaker at several Breakbulk events and has been a member of the VIP Shipper Club since 2010, when he was running Fluor’s operations in Chile for mining. For him, it’s the Breakbulk “ecosystem” that matters most. Many connections are made casually, during the social get-togethers that make up an important part of all events. Breakbulk is a people industry, he said. “No matter how complex or simple your project is, it’s all about the person on the other end – and their capability to troubleshoot. That’s what makes the difference.”

Azparrent said that Breakbulk events are often an opportunity for shippers, vendors and service providers to meet face to face after months or even years of doing business virtually. “It’s funny, but I will have people in our group in Houston who are doing business with people in Europe or South America, and at Breakbulk they finally get to meet in person. I find that very positive.”

Incentives For Attendance

Breakbulk gives VIP Shippers two things, Azparrent said: an opportunity to be active at events and an incentive through complimentary access for VIPs and reduced costs for education. These are very important to EPCs, OEMs and manufacturers with extremely tight travel and education budgets. Those extra incentives make it easier to justify the travel spend and make it worthwhile.

“They give opportunities to our people, give them extra training,” he said. “Even above and beyond Education Day and the class sessions, the exhibition gives them an opportunity to network. We have some project logistics managers who don’t have as many networking opportunities, so this is a big opportunity to network outside of the normal day-to-day.”

Similarly, Gowans pointed out that cargo owners, or buyers of services, and sellers of services, i.e. exhibitors, are budgeted very differently. “Buyers cannot spend the way sellers can spend – and the VIP club allows more participation (from shippers) from a purely practical standpoint,” he said.

Networking at Breakbulk is also crucial to Wood Mustang’s Vaughan. “The first time I walked into Breakbulk,” she said, “it was, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ I’d been to OTC, but this – every single booth and every single person had something of value to me. The connections that we’ve made are invaluable. We are utilizing those connections by creating regional banks of service providers. We only get that because we met them through Breakbulk.”

Gowans always takes away value from the exhibition halls, he said. “I like the diversity of the participants, from equipment providers to service providers to physical services, i.e. the ports and manufacturers, the new products and offerings to be introduced and explained. I get something out of that. I like the exhibitor-led sessions. The hall is an important part of this experience.”

Management of Breakbulk’s VIP Shipper Club is transferring from Elizabeth Wetzel to a new member of the Breakbulk team, Mark Jakobsen. He joined the company as head of portfolio marketing and the VIP buyers program for Breakbulk’s parent company, ITE Transportation and Logistics, early in 2016. His goal is to create a one-club community that Breakbulk’s VIP shippers will use in their day-to-day lives. The program will “engage constantly with the VIPs to know their concerns and their success stories, and to share best practices,” he said.

Jakobsen, who has an extensive background in events and marketing, said that other concepts include creating a streamlined VIP events registration process and ensuring that VIPs receive all industry, show news and content updates timely, as well as all the tools Breakbulk can provide to help them progress in their jobs. His goal is to increase VIP Shipper club membership by 10 percent over the coming year.

Jakobsen is interested in creating a series of webinars based on what the industry most wants to know about: education topics and training, industry updates, cutting-edge speakers, and so on. These could be presented live or on demand – “whatever suits the VIPs’ busy schedules,” Jakobsen said. “We are running the VIP Club for them, and so it needs to be directed by them.”

The Breakbulk story is about all of its participants: the VIP Shipper Club, the exhibitors, the students, the Breakbulk team: all of those who make up the cast of characters. Breakbulk creates an opportunity for people to come together and share this common interest, regardless of which side of the table – shipper or service provider – they’re on. At Breakbulk they meet, learn together, serve on panels together, party together. “It’s just a wonderful forum for our industry,” Bechtel’s Mottola said.

Lead image: Students attend workshops at Breakbulk Americas 2015.