Since 1985, Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen has had its home base in an Art Deco building on the Keyserlei in Antwerp. A beautiful building, but not sustainable enough, which is why the shipping company’s 62 employees are moving to a brand new office a bit further down the road.
Evergreen has its own office in Antwerp, from where the Taiwanese shipping company controls its operations. For a long time, this was done by an agency, until Evergreen organised it itself.“In 1984, Evergreen Shipping Company was the first to introduce a Round-The-World route (Eastbound and Westbound),” Heidi Van Dael, junior vice president Customer Service at Evergreen, looks back on the shipping company’s history. “It was not until 2002 that that service would be replaced by two so-called pendulum services (Northern Europe, North and Central America, and East Asia, Northern Europe, Asia, and Pacific Northwest). Also in 1984, the agencies Rotterdam Freight Agencies (RFA) and Antwerp Freight Agencies (AFA) were established as agencies specifically for Evergreen, meaning they did not represent other shipping companies as shipping agents.”
Art deco
In 2001, both Antwerp Freight Agencies and Rotterdam Freight Agencies were acquired by Evergreen itself and continued as agencies under the name Evergreen Shipping Agency. The change was a very deliberate strategy by Evergreen at the time: all its agencies in Western Europe were taken over by the shipping company.
Shortly after its establishment, Antwerp Freight Agencies housed at Frankrijklei for a while, before moving to De Keyserlei in 1985. That year, the shipping company moved into two floors in a beautiful art deco building on the Keyserlei. First floors 5 and 6, later higher floors 10 and 11 with a beautiful view of the central station. In September 2024, the employees of the Taiwanese shipping company will close the door behind them for the last time.
Sustainability
“As a shipping company, Evergreen is very much committed to sustainability and that is immediately the main reason why we are moving,” Van Dael explains. “The location here on the Keyserlei is phenomenal, but the building is out of date. With the ETS 2 regulations (ETS stands for emission trading system for CO2 emissions, ed.) coming up next year, it was no longer justifiable to stay here any longer.”
In line with its green ambitions, the shipping company will soon move its local branch to the Kievit Tower in Van Immerseelstraat, the back of which opens onto Plantin Moretuslei. The building is owned by Baloise and managed by ENGIE. From September 2024, Evergreen’s 62 employees in Antwerp will move into the new offices.
More and more Antwerp
As a shipping company, Evergreen operates exclusively on the container market. Its main trades are Asia – Europe and Asia – trans-Pacific (Americas), but in addition the shipping company also offers trades from Europe to America (East Coast) and some Mediterranean services.
“For Evergreen, Rotterdam and Hamburg are the most important ports in Europe. Nevertheless, the port of Antwerp has become increasingly important for the shipping company in recent years, and certain services that used to come only to Rotterdam now also call at Antwerp,” Van Dael says. “Also as a transhipment port, Antwerp is gaining importance for Evergreen.”
The Taiwanese shipping company has a permanent berth at the DP World terminal Antwerp Gateway.
