Flexibility Ethos

At VTTI, we are much more than providers of passive assets such as tanks, pipes and storage. Rather, we play an active role in helping our customers to maximise the value of their cargoes.

Our customers identify imbalances in the worldwide supply of fuels, and focus on realising opportunities that will achieve the best price. In turn, this places real demands on their own supply chain, and they look to VTTI to help them create the precise specifications needed, in the right quantities, at the right time and in the right place.

This demands capacity, certainly, and complete professionalism along the key trading routes of the world. But it also requires people with commercial skills, initiative and an entrepreneurial psyche that matches our clients’ own.

Kenya Matsumoto is a broker at our parent company Vitol in London. He works continuously with VTTI and our storage facilities around the world.

One of the oil industry’s most dynamic trading sectors is in product derived from the middle of the barrel: middle distillates. Kenya specializes in broking jet aviation fuel, kerosene and heating oil for domestic use, and automotive diesel fuels.

He says: “My role is to identify imbalances in the worldwide supply of these fuels, and meet them profitably. This means I need to work with terminals that can help us create products in a multitude of specs.”

Kenya looks for two specific qualities in a terminal. The first is operational excellence, and he says: “We know that VTTI terminals give the same priority to safety that we do. As well as being the right thing to do, safe terminals tend to be reliable terminals, so we avoid reliability problems that could cost us time and opportunities.”

The second quality Kenya looks for is commercial excellence. He looks for a terminal to help him create value from his inventory. He says: “For example, I deal a lot with VTTI’s Ventspils team in Latvia. We took a major cargo there – around 100 thousand metric tonnes from the Far East originating out of Taiwan. We worked with the team to break the cargo and blend it, opening up possibilities not just in Europe but in markets such as Africa and Brazil. They helped add value to the tune of a million dollars.”

And that’s not unusual. Via Ventspils, Vitol is now supplying all kinds of grades to Brazil (where they are the second biggest supplier), Argentina, the US, Africa, Europe, the Middle East… infact, they’re sending a ship to Ventspils every two days or so.

Kenya also works regularly with VTTI’s team and terminal in Rotterdam, which he describes as “possibly the best port in the world”. He also uses our Amsterdam facility, which has a particular strength in complex blending.

Looking at VTTI’s other worldwide assets, Kenya comments: “Fujairah in the UAE is key, with its prime location at the entry and exit point of the Gulf. The Middle East is becoming a major consumer, and not just a supply region. Similarly, Kaliningrad will be of key importance; as Russia becomes the largest exporter of distillates in the European region its location will deliver major tax advantages. And then there’s Vitco in Argentina; that gives us access to Latin America, and I doubt we’d be able to do business there without it.”