Cecilia Eckelmann-Battistello, punchy shipping executive who painted her vessels pink – obituary
Cecilia Eckelmann-Battistello, who has died of cancer aged 73, was a formidably tough businesswoman who made her name in the male-dominated world of shipping and logistics – to which she brought a touch of colour and whimsy by painting some of her container ships, port equipment and lorries bright pink.
The second of eight siblings, Cecilia Battistello was born in Vicenza, Italy, on April 13 1950. After finishing school and secretarial college, in 1973 she joined Contship, a company founded by Angelo Ravano in 1969 at the dawn of containerisation, when he converted a traditional family shipping company into a fully containerised operation with the slogan “We Bring the Ship to Your Factory”. Ravano took her on when she reacted with poise to an aggressive interview.
Her first assignment was in Marseille, where she managed Contship’s traffic operations. After just two years she was given the task of re-organising the company’s business in the Eastern Mediterranean, a challenge which involved exploiting neglected niche markets, organising transports often in countries riven by war, and challenging corrupt business practices by local agents.
She was instrumental in turning what began as a small shipping line and terminal operator into a global player, spending time in Rotterdam, Casablanca, the Lebanon, Syria, the Emirates, Arabian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent – and Felixstowe, where Ravano relocated the company’s headquarters in 1978 and where she ran Contship’s sales activities and lived for several years.
In 1988 she became managing director of Contship Containerlines, and over the next eight years developed it into a profitable 26-vessel operation. She went on to hold several other leadership positions in the industry, including chairing the India Pakistan Bangladesh Shipping Conference, the oldest shipping conference in the world.
Always stylishly dressed, a favourite colour being pink (her co-written 2019 autobiography was entitled Cecilia’s Dream – A Pink Ship Across the Oceans), she thought nothing of visiting ports and clambering up metal stairways and into crane cabs in high heels.
In 1992 she made headlines after introducing a series of containerships whose hulls and superstructures were painted pink – a clever bit of free marketing and an indication, perhaps, that a woman was in control. Other vessels were painted yellow and turquoise.
She became a great Anglophile, once describing England as “the best country in the world”. While living in the UK she would regularly invite colleagues and their families to barbecues in her back garden, and she enjoyed dining on Il Punto, Contship’s own restaurant boat in the port of Ipswich.
In 1996 she was elected Chairman and Chief Executive of Contship Containerlines and at the same time was appointed to the management board of Europe’s largest container terminal operator Eurokai, whose chief executive, Thomas Eckelmann, she married the same year.
She resigned as board chairman of Contship in 1998 when the company was sold to CP Ships, recalling that she “cried so much the Thames would have overflowed”. She became president and managing director of Contship Italia which operates La Spezia container terminal and other port and logistic facilities in Italy. From 2005 to 2010 she was President of the Federation of European Private Port Operators. She also played a key role in the international success of Eurokai which became the main shareholder of the Contship Italia Group.
In later years Cecilia Eckelmann-Batistello and her husband divided their time between homes in Hamburg and Cyprus. In 2015 she was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the journal Containerisation International. Asked why there were so few women in leadership roles in shipping, she said: “I think it is women who feel inadequate in a man’s world more than men creating obstacles.” She is survived by her husband and by a stepson and stepddaughter.
Cecilia Eckelmann-Battistello, born April 13 1950, died March 6 2024
