My Years as OCEAN Chairman

Wolfgang Sump reflects

From internal politics in 1989 to navigating Brexit in 2021, Wolfgang Sump’s 34-year journey on the OCEAN Board reflects the evolution of European ship supply. Discover an insider’s look at mastering EU veterinary, VAT, and customs affairs, and building a unified maritime trade voice.

In 1989 the Board of the German Shipsuppliers Association nominated me as the German member of the OCEAN Board. At that time I was by far the youngest person of the group and I was quite surprized at the highly interesting – to avoid the word irritating – atmosphere in this body. There were more internal inefficient arguments than professional work for the benefit of the industry. Personal and national vanities seemed more important than a unified voice towards the bodies of the European Union (EU) – at that time the European Economic Community (EEC).

All national shipsuppiers associations traditionally were in close contacts to authorities on regional and national level. However, with the growing influence of decisions taken in Brussels on the national legislation there was a lot of pressure on OCEAN to become more professional and year after year the cooperation within the organisation changed to the better. For the last 25 years the work in OCEAN can only be described as professional, productive and successful in a very friendly atmosphere. During that period I met a lot of highly experienced and interesting professionals. Many of them I can call very good personal friends today.

For many years my personal duty within OCEAN was the field of veterinary affairs, as the complicated rules of health documentation of shipsupply consignments needed special attention.  

Over the years the EEC/EU grew and so OCEAN had the chance to grow as well. Personal visits to new OCEAN members were necessary to explain the “new” rules to the joining national shipsupply associations.

The main subjects of our work were and still are Customs, Excise, VAT and Veterinary matters. All subjects were constantly discussed internally and with various bodies and working groups of the EEC/EU. The workload was always handled by the OCEAN working groups.

In October 2021 I was elected Chairman of OCEAN and I took over a perfect structure from my Dutch predecessor Dirk Cupido. The daily OCEAN work turned out run very smoothly and the cooperation with our Policy Adviser Arne Mielken was perfect. I was re-elected in November 2022 for another term. Although I see my time as OCEAN Chairman as successful, I still remember the saddest moment of that time: we lost the British Association of Shipsuppliers (BASS) as a member due to Brexit and could not even hold them as associate members. In my opinion this development did neither help the EU-shipsuppliers nor our colleagues in the UK.

In March 2023 I stepped down as OCEAN Chairman due to my professional retirement after having been Board member for 34 years. I passed over to my successor Costantino Zavoianni knowing that OCEAN was in good hands with him.

I wish OCEAN all the best for the next 50 years !