Cecilia Eckelmann Battistello
Shipping executive who painted her container ships vivid pink
CECILIA ECKELMANN BATTISTELLO, who has died of cancer aged 73, was a formidable businesswoman in the male-dominated world of shipping – to which she brought a touch of colour by painting some of her container ships, port equipment and lorries pink.
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, when he converted a traditional family shipping company into a fully containerised operation. Ravano took her on when she reacted with poise to an aggressive interview.
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 a small shipping line and terminal operator into a global player, spending time in Rotterdam, Casablanca, Lebanon,
Syria, the Emirates, 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, developing it into a profitable 26-vessel operation. She went on to hold several other leadership positions, including chairing the India Pakistan Bangladesh Shipping Conference, the oldest 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 in high heels.
In 1992 she made headlines after introducing a series of container ships whose hulls and superstructures were painted pink – a clever bit of marketing. 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 CEO of Contship Containerlines and 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 chairman of Contship in 1998 when it 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 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 success of Eurokai which became the main shareholder of the Contship Italia Group.
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.