As the Extreme Sailing Series (ESS) arrived in Oman recently, it was hard to fathom why the multinational, locally-based Gulf Agency Company (GAC) remains under the radar.
The company is the logistical powerhouse behind this race of champions. Competitors include the JPMorgan catamaran skippered by Sir Ben Ainsley, the most successful Olympic sailor of all time, who played a key role in Oracle Team USA's astonishing victory in the America's Cup last year, and Seve Jarvin, the skipper of the GAC-Pindar entry and a seven-time JJ Giltinan World Champion and a Match Racing champion.
"We are the special logistics providers for the Extreme Sailing Series, we actually transport all the boats to all the nine different venues throughout the series, by containers on ships," says Sonia Prabhakar, GAC's regional communications manager for the Middle East.
And that is no mean feat when schedules are set in stone, adds Sean Bradley, the company's group marketing director.
"Logictically you're challenged time-wise when those 20, 25 containers are on the ship. An ESS series runs pretty much every four to five weeks, so it's tight. We have to get the stuff there, cleared through customs all the paperwork sorted."
Yet watching the knife-edged hulls of 11 ultra-high performance catamarans slice through the azure waters off the coast of Muscat, few specators realised the Dubai-headquarterd GAC is one of the world's biggest shipping, logistics and marine services providers for vessel owners and operators.
"We are an agency for the shippers," says Daniel Nordberg, the general manager of GAC Oman.
"We work with all the port authorities, the cargo-lifting companies and others to ensure the ship is in and out as quickly and easily as possible."
GAC is a family company, but it is also a trust. "It can never be taken over, floated or bought out," says Mr Nordberg.
There are no private investors and only bank lending is used for purchases, although GAC owns outright most of its hardware assets, he says.
"The ratio of debt to assets is very low," says Mr Nordberg. "Our assets are our employees.
"We are a local representative of the owners of the ships. When the vessel arrives, say to unload crude, we provide a service at a set fee - and usually before the ship enters port you get an advance.
"We have to pay the port fees, the fee for [cargo] lifting et cetera.
"If, for instance, a tanker wants to unload [say, 200,000 barrels of crude] in West Africa, the cost is maybe US$400,000 or $500,000 and we have to pay that and then recover it plus our agency fee from the shipper. If we don't get a full fee, we're out of pocket."
Tanker costs are usually based on the Worldscale, a table containing freight rates taking into account all cost-related items involved. Such items incude: the distances travelled; the port costs; bunker, or fuel, costs; and others such as cargo loading and unloading charges.
Rates are published on a dollar per tonne of cargo basis and vary depending on what the cargo is.
"But our fee is a very small part of the shipping company's costs," says Mr Nordberg.
"Agency fees can range from $500 to $5,000, it depends on what type of ship, what port and what service is required."
Ms Prabhakar adds that it also varies "depending on beurauecratic issues, geographical issues".
There are also other considerations.
"You look at Nigeria," says Mr Nordberg. "It's not the easiest place to work. If you're going to run a proper agency there you need to have satellite phones, a presence in all the different ports, generators running. It's expensive to operate there."
Among companies GAC works with is Chevron in Russia, a part of the business that Mr Nordberg sees as possibly open to impact from the rising tensions between the West and Moscow.
"If the sanctions caused Chevron to stop operating there, then of course we would leave," he says.
"We will follow the international sanctions. Look at Iran, we can't touch that. Any business that is originated there, any vessel that operates with Iran, we cannot handle."
He says GAC sees its next area of expansion in the field of upstream oil and gas logistics."For instance, we have a rig that we are moving from Oman to Jebel Ali, ensuring how it's packed, that all the parts are there, dealing with the contractors, making sure it all flows smoothly.
"It's a very specialised job and you need to have all the permissions, all the paperwork, certificates of origin for each part, et cetera, otherwise it will not get through customs. We manage all this," Mr Nordberg says.
"We hire the cranes [to move the rig parts], we hire the trucking companies. We have people at the borders to deal with customs, immigration, whatever needed. That is our tagline: 'delivering your strategy'."
Still while the fee GAC charges is small, it soon adds up.
"In a year we deal with about 60,000 to 65,000 ships globally," says Ms Prabhakar.
"That's a lot of ships."
chnelson@thenational.ae