For the shipping industry, the advent of the 20th century marked the end of general cargo freight ships as they were conventionally known – the days of seafaring lore lie even further in the past, and the classical notion of a ship – owning firm’s services has undergone major transformations.       Nowadays, world trade requires high technology in ships and precision work by crews, as well as high standards and speed in equal measure from both. Seamen today must be able to perform demanding tasks of greater than av- erage difficulty, be flexible, motivated and have an absolute command of innovative transport systems. The growth of world trade generates unsurmised challenges. For international shipping, challenges that can only be mastered with intelligent solutions. Ex- perts expect that the total global transport volume will double over the next ten years – which means enormous growth rates for container shipping as well. We identified this trend at an early stage and have successfully established our competence on the world market in a consistent and systematic manner. This has been effected at all corporate levels within ALPHA SHIP, a company foun- ded as recently as 1994. We are completely networked in all that we do, using state-of-the-art techno- logy, award-winning ships and superbly trained crews – with self-defined ob- jectives that go beyond the highest internationally established safety standards. Another essential element is the permanent, online availability of data on the current location, conditions and cargo of our ships. We have fed all data and itineraries of our ships into the network for companies that charter our ships. That for us is an integral part of our customer-centred service provision. That, after all. Is what has led to our success. One thing is sure: the fact that ALPHA SHIP has an exceptionally large number of satisfied customers today is a suc- cess story we owe to the trust that customers place in us, trust that is ulti- mately based on the quality of our service. ALPHA SHIP GmbH On TOP