“Apart from us, the only people who are so consistently busy day and night are journalists in the media. The news never stops, and neither does shipping.” Karel Maes began his work as a claims handler at NNPC during the coronavirus lockdown. It was a time of striking trends in the marine insurance world, he notes enthusiastically in this interview.
The leitmotiv running through Karel Maes’ career is that his work has taken him further and further north. Born and raised a Belgian, he started his career as a company lawyer in Antwerp with the Royal Belgian Shipowners’ Association and then Safmarine (now part of Maersk). He then crossed the Dutch border to work at Vroon in Breskens, until personal relationships later tempted him to move to Groningen, where he could start work at NNPC. As he puts it himself, “Further north isn’t possible any more, so this is as far as I can go.”
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