Breakbulk Throwback: The CEC Future Hijacking

By Murray Cooper

In the latest in our series of “Breakbulk throwbacks”, taken from Issue 3, 2024 of Breakbulk Magazine, industry veteran Murray Cooper recalls how he was thrust into a high-stakes scenario after a vessel laden with critical breakbulk cargo had fallen prey to hijackers.

(3-min read)


On November 7, 2008, I was happily attending a family lunch in Singapore when I received a phone call advising that the 15,000 tons of steel plate that was specially manufactured in Austria for the construction of an offshore oil and gas platform in Batam, Indonesia, and loaded on the MV CEC Future, had been hijacked near Somalia.

My phone immediately started “running hot” with questions from the project manager, engineers and procurement personnel asking the obvious: “How long will the pirates hold the vessel?” This, of course, was an impossible question to answer with any semblance of certainty, so I set out to decipher what actually happened and establish a timeline for the vessel’s release.

“According to a statement of facts presented to the court, Ibrahim and other Somalis were armed with AK 47s, a rocket-propelled grenade, and handguns when they attacked and seized the vessel,” the Captain reported. “The ship is owned by Clipper Group, a Danish company, and contained cargo belonging to a Texas-based company.”

To minimize construction downtime, we formed a task force to source steel plate from steel stockists and steel mills that had the production capacity to meet our requirements, and have the deliveries made to the Batam fabrication yard as soon as possible.

My role was to coordinate and align communications with all of the supply chain stakeholders. The steel mill in Austria was able to reschedule their production line to supply 80 percent of the steel plate required with the balance coming from several other sources.

After renegotiating vessel charters with armed security guards to ensure a safe passage through the Gulf of Aden and finalizing the loadout plan, I traveled to Austria to coordinate the interface between our project team and the steel mill’s customer service and logistics team member.

I must say that I was extremely impressed with the precision planning and shipment execution program that the steel mill had implemented. The steel plate was loaded by overhead gantry cranes in the steel mill’s dispatch area directly onto barges and then barged down the Rhine River system to the Port of Rotterdam, where the cargo was efficiently moved from the barges to a charter vessel.

The second shipment departed Rotterdam about 90 days later than the original shipment and arrived at Batam without incident.

The original shipment arrived on the to the Port of Rotterdam, where the cargo was efficiently moved from the barges to a charter vessel. The second shipment departed Rotterdam about 90 days later than the original shipment and arrived at Batam without incident. The original shipment arrived on the MV CEC Future into Batam about nine months behind schedule and apart from a severe financial blowout, including a US$1.7 million ransom payment, all of the crew on the MV CEC Future were released unharmed by the pirates who were later arrested and sentenced to jail time in the United States.

This incident subsequently became the inspiration for the 2012 Danish movie, A Hijacking. Available to stream on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and YouTube.


Murray Cooper is the director of corporate governance for LV Group and formerly Senior Manager Global Logistics & Trade Compliance for McDermott International. His career path involves logistics assignments both as a shipper and a project logistics service provider.

TOP PHOTO: CEC Future. CREDIT: Shipspotting.com