The Evergreen Group has announced that Maurice Storey, the former Chief Executive of the UK Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA), is to become Chairman of its UK affiliate Hatsu Marine Ltd. He will take up this new full-time appointment on 1 December 2003. Jason Lin continues as President of Hatsu Marine Ltd.

“The Evergreen Group has announced that Maurice Storey, the former chief executive of the UK Maritime & Coastguard Agency, is to become Chairman of its UK affiliate Hatsu Marine Ltd, effective 1 December 2003.”

Established in January 2002, Hatsu has its headquarters in London and currently owns a fleet of seven new UK-flag container vessels including five 6332TEU ships currently operating in the transpacific trades. Within the next two to three years, Hatsu will take delivery of several more container vessels including post-Panamax giants of 6700TEU and 8100TEU.

In association with other Evergreen Group companies, Hatsu currently offers container services between Asia and North America. Towards the end of this year, it expects to launch new services linking Asia and Europe.

With Hatsu building up its fleet, the ship management and operations workload on the company’s staff in London is expected to increase significantly. Mr Storey’s vast experience, both technical and commercial, is expected to prove especially invaluable at this important stage in Hatsu’s development, ensuring that the company will be well-positioned to offer its customers in Asia, North America and Europe a high level of service at all times.

Mr Storey has recently retired as chief executive of the MCA, a position he had held since April 1998. The MCA was itself established on 1 April 1998 with the amalgamation of the former Marine Safety Agency and Coastguard Agencies of the UK Department for Transport. Mr Storey’s initial duties included ensuring that this merger took place as smoothly as possible and that the MCA quickly became a single effective and co-ordinated organisation with clear objectives.

Prior to his joining the MCA, Mr Storey had spent eight years as Director (Ship and Port Management) with Stena Line Ltd. There he oversaw implementation of the ISM code in April 1995, just over one year ahead of the required deadline. He was also responsible for the commercial and technical management of three Irish Sea ports and during this period, the total number of staff under the control of the Ship and Port Management Department was approximately 2,000.

In addition to ferries, Mr Storey has experience of a wide range of other vessel types including containerships, having been a director of Sea Containers Ltd from 1976 until 1990. He also gained experience with gas carriers, product and crude oil tankers up to 400,000 dwt as head of the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company’s Technical Department from 1972 until 1976.