Anglo-Eastern Brand Guidelines: Hong Kong 1974, a 1998 Buy-Out & the 2015 Univan Merger

A Hong Kong company and a 1998 buy-out.

Anglo-Eastern is a ship manager with its head office in Hong Kong. The company dates its incorporation there to August 1974, and MarineLink, reporting in August 2015, likewise says the group “started in 1974.” According to that report, it took off as a third-party manager after Peter Cremers, a young Belgian executive with a degree in naval architecture, joined in 1985; Marcel Liedts later joined him on the management team, and under their leadership the managed fleet grew steadily. Anglo-Eastern’s own timeline records its 50th ship under management in December 1994.

Two moves in quick succession changed its shape. In August 1998 Cremers led a management buy-out, and in October 2001 the company merged with the UK-based Denholm Ship Management, a step that MarineLink says gave it a presence in Europe. From then on the timeline counts ships: the 200th in July 2006, the 300th in September 2009 and the 400th in April 2012.

The larger step came in 2015. In August that year Anglo-Eastern and Univan Ship Management, another Hong Kong manager, agreed to combine as the Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, which MarineLink described as the largest merger yet of independent third-party ship management companies. Univan had been started by Captain C.A.J. Vanderperre. The merged group was led by Cremers as executive chairman and Univan’s chief executive, Bjorn Hojgaard, as chief executive, and Anglo-Eastern’s timeline gives the combined fleet as more than 600 ships. The everyday name stayed Anglo-Eastern: in May 2026 MarineLink still wrote “Anglo-Eastern Univan Group (Anglo-Eastern).”

Ships, crews and its own academy.

Anglo-Eastern describes four core services: technical ship management, crew management, newbuilding supervision and cruise and leisure management. On its About page in November 2026 it gave more than 700 vessels under full technical management, another 500 ships under crew management, project work on almost 1,000 newbuildings and conversions, more than 39,000 seafarers, and more than 2,200 shore staff in Hong Kong and over 29 other locations. Its vessel pages run from bulk carriers and tankers to LNG carriers and passenger ships.

Training is central to how the company presents itself. It says training has been a strategic pillar since 1995; it opened the Anglo-Eastern Maritime Training Centre in Mumbai in November 2000 and founded the Anglo-Eastern Maritime Academy at Karjat, India, in August 2009, and its training site lists centres including Delhi, Mumbai and Parañaque, near Manila. In June 2025 The Hindu BusinessLine, which called Anglo-Eastern one of the largest employers of Indian seafarers, reported its “Mission 30” plan to raise the share of management-level officers under 30 to 30 per cent by 2030, and noted that it recruits through an Indian arm based in Kochi. Its careers section runs ship cadet programmes in the UK and the Philippines.

The group has also bought into new segments. Its timeline records a procurement joint venture with Seaspan, Sea Sourcing, in May 2022; the purchase of the newbuilding specialist SeaQuest Marine in June 2022; the completed acquisition of Cruise Management International and CMI Leisure Management in December 2022; and the acquisition of Euronav Ship Management Hellas in Greece in 2024, which MarineLink dates to April 2024 and the company’s timeline lists under June. In May 2026 the group held a technical summit in Athens, one of four locations for the series, MarineLink reported. A client portal, my.angloeastern, gives owners online access to fleet information. The timeline also marks technical firsts for the company itself: the Anglo-Eastern Fleet Performance Centre, launched in July 2021 to use ship data across the fleet; its first dual-fuel LNG-powered vessel under management in October 2021; and a shared services centre in Navi Mumbai, opened in February 2023.

Design and documentation.

Third-party ship managers sell a service rather than a product. They run vessels that belong to someone else, so their identities have no hull, funnel or cargo of their own to show. Instead they present themselves through the work: technical management, crewing, newbuilding supervision and the training of seafarers. V.Group, for example, describes itself as “an independent service provider, not a ship owner or a manufacturer,” and Anglo-Eastern says it manages vessels on behalf of shipowners, charterers and operators.

Their marks tend to be simple and sit on corporate websites. Blue and teal wordmarks are a familiar sight in the trade, but not a rule: V.Group’s logo files come in green and black versions, and Anglo-Eastern’s header pairs a white wordmark with a golden emblem. Around those marks sit photographs of ships and crews as the companies publish them — a managed vessel at sea, a simulator room, cadets with their teachers or on graduation day.

The websites follow a common plan. There are service pages for technical management and crewing, often split by vessel type, from tankers and bulk carriers to LNG carriers and cruise ships. Training-centre pages show simulators and classrooms; Anglo-Eastern, for instance, runs its own academy and training centres in India and the Philippines. Office maps and location lists stretch across Asia and Europe, and careers-at-sea pages set out cadet programmes and routes to promotion.

This guide looks at how each manager tells that story: who founded it, who owns it, which mergers shaped it, and how it describes its services and its seafarers. Figures for fleets, staff and offices are given as the companies or dated reports state them, and each palette here is an unofficial interpretation, not a brand standard.

The first refresh in more than 40 years.

Anglo-Eastern’s timeline says it went through its first rebranding exercise in more than 40 years in October 2017, “introducing newly articulated values and a refreshed visual identity.” The values it publishes now read as short headings — having the courage to do what’s right, progressively setting the standard, and nurturing people and communities — and its home page opens with the line “Pioneers in ship management for over 50 years.” In April 2020 its head office moved across the harbour to new premises in Kowloon Bay.

The website header pairs a white wordmark with a golden emblem, and the pages lean on photographs of ships and crews. A featured-vessel slot is given to the LNG dual-fuel bulk carrier Ubuntu Empathy, whose construction the company says its Anglo-Eastern Technical Services team supervised, and the training pages carry images of simulators, cadets with their teachers and graduation days. The news section mixes company announcements with opinion pieces and a series called “Foresights.”

For a design guide, Anglo-Eastern shows how a ship manager can keep its own name through a merger and tell its story through fleet milestones and training. Compare Univan, the Hong Kong manager it combined with in 2015, and Euronav, whose Greek ship-management arm it bought in 2024. For this guide we use a harbour navy, a warm amber and a pale sea grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Anglo-Eastern’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.