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One of the father figures of modern container shipping, British executive Ray Miles, died after a short illness on Friday 6 November aged 71.

At time of his death, he was serving as advising director at Stena AB.

Born in London in 1944, Mr Miles graduated from Coventry University’s Lanchester Polytechnic in 1970 with a 1st in Economics, and earned an MBA from London Business School.

Mr Miles began his career in 1972 with Ocean Transport & Trading in Liverpool. In the early 1980s he was named executive vice president of Barber Blue Sea, OTT’s roll-on/roll-off shipping joint venture with Wilh Wilhelmsen of Norway and Brostroms of Sweden.

In 1985 he joined start-up Global Equipment Management (GEM) as managing director. GEM was one of the first cooperative ventures to promote the ‘grey-box’ concept to improve equipment utilisation through pooling.

In 1988 Mr Miles entered the world of container shipping, where he was to have his greatest professional impact, after being appointed chief executive of Canada Maritime, a transatlantic container shipping joint venture between Canadian Pacific and Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB). Canada Maritime was part of Canadian Pacific’s shipping subsidiary, CP Ships, which at the time also included non-container shipping services. Shortly after, Canadian Pacific withdrew from non-container markets and repositioned CP Ships as a container specialist with Mr Miles as chief executive.

He then engineered one of the first waves of consolidation to take place in box shipping – presiding over the acquisition of CMB’s minority shareholding in Canada Maritime and the subsequent expansion of CP Ships from a single-trade four-vessel niche carrier, with annual sales of $100m, to a global top-15 shipping, terminal and logistics group serving 20 tradelanes with a fleet of 84 ships and annual sales of $3.6bn. Along the way, CP Ships acquired some of container shipping’s best-known and historic brands, including: Australia-New Zealand Direct Line, Cast, Contship Containerlines, Italia Line, Ivaran, Lykes Lines and TMM Lines.

In 2001, when Canadian Pacific spun off all its subsidiaries as independent publicly-traded businesses, CP Ships Ltd, with an initial enterprise value of about $800m, became the only pure-play container shipping company listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges. The float was a relative triumph, but it also made it vulnerable to hostile takeover bids and, in 2005, Mr Miles briefly fought (in one interview at the time he memorably said that CP Ship would be the “diner not the dinner” and ultimately failed to prevent the $2.3bn sale of CP Ships to TUI, parent of Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd. With the deal complete, Hapag-Lloyd became the world’s fifth largest container shipping company.

However, his list of achievements was substantial. While in charge of CP Ships, Mr Miles served as the first chairman of the World Shipping Council, established in 2000 to interface with regulators on critical matters affecting the industry, including cooperating with the US government to establish maritime security benchmarks post-9/11. He also served as chairman of the Box Club, a container carrier CEO forum, and as non-executive director of West of England P&I Club and the UK Chamber of Shipping.

CP Ships was a sponsor of the National Maritime Museum and Mr Miles served a trustee, and the CP Ships Special Exhibitions Gallery in Greenwich hosted three major exhibitions: ‘South: the Race to the Pole’ in 2001 focusing on the historic early 20th century age of Antarctic exploration, ‘Elizabeth’ in 2003 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I, and ‘The Adventures of Tin Tin at Sea’ in 2004 marking the 75th anniversary of the famed comic strip reporter’s first adventure with his faithful dog Snowy.

He was active in a number of charities and served as chairman of Devon Community Foundation, trustee for Country Holidays for Inner City Kids (Chicks) and chairman of the Garden Opera, which staged outdoor opera performances as fundraisers for other charities.

He was also a lifelong Chelsea Football Club supporter, holding a season ticket in the East Middle Stand at Stamford Bridge for more than 20 years and followed the team to many away matches. A talented amateur footballer himself, he played well into his forties.

Last year, he returned to Coventry University as a guest lecturer.

Mr Miles is survived by Susan, his wife of 49 years, his daughters Claire and Alice and four grandchildren, Sam, Daniel, Madeleine and Francesca.

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  • Steve Woolgrove

    November 16, 2015 at 10:12 pm

    Ray was a human dynamo of a man, and I first met him when I joined GEM in 1986 where he was very encouraging to this “new boy” finding his feet at the company. Ray was very approachable, having an almost permanent smile on his face, and some suitably ‘pithy’ comments when appropriate! He made us all laugh, and everyone felt at ease in his presence, a skill which not many bosses can boast! We lost touch when he went to CANMAR but I still remembered him with great affection. So I’m greatly saddened to hear that he’s passed away so young and with so much left to give to the world. Bon Voyage Ray, you’ll be missed. All the best, Steve.

  • Sharon

    April 16, 2016 at 10:03 pm

    Ask former CP Ships employees how they feel about Ray Miles.