GUBERNA Podcast - Governance Talks - North Sea Port: you also need permission

"We have the permits. But you also need permission."

What does stakeholder engagement mean for a port like North Sea Port, beyond the standard consultation process that every company has?

Cas König: Ours is quite a complex port. We are government-owned, but run at arm’s length. That means we have to run the shop as if it were a real business, and so earn a return on what we do. At the same time our shareholders are all public bodies, in our case in both the Netherlands and Flanders. That makes us unusual. You have to take a great many interests into account, political ones included.

And something we see more and more: a port has always had a big influence on its surroundings. But in recent years, partly because of social media, I think, the influence of those surroundings on the firms in our port, and so on the port authority too, has grown stronger and more intense. And sometimes the nuance gets a bit lost. You can say: I’d rather not have to deal with that. But it is the reality we have to act on. It makes things complicated, but also fascinating. And to be frank, I don’t expect that to change.

People are better informed. They have more information at their disposal and ask sharper questions. At the same time things are getting scarce: land, for example. And once something is scarce, everyone starts to wonder: are we doing the right things, should this be here or not? Everyone forms an opinion. The freedom you had ten years or so ago to do your job as you saw fit has gone. You will have to pay more attention to your stakeholders to achieve what you have in mind.

"The freedom you had ten years or so ago to do your job as you saw fit has gone."

Stakeholders are many and varied. You cannot deal with each of them equally closely. How does North Sea Port map them, and how does it set priorities?

König: That is still work in progress. Last year we presented our new strategic plan, Impact 2030, which looks five years ahead. I started in 2025, so the plan was already well advanced and I was able to make a small contribution at the last minute. We then said to each other: it would be good to use those five years to look further ahead too, to 2050. What will the port look like then? You cannot do that without talking to your stakeholders. We have ideas of our own, but we know for certain that if you don’t bring those around you along, you won’t achieve them.

So we are now rolling out a full stakeholder-management programme. We started just before the summer and, to be honest, it will take at least two years. The first round is: who are our stakeholders? We have a picture of that, but if you do it seriously you get towards 200 or 300 of them. With a port there is always someone who, one way or another, has an interest. Then you have to group them, because you cannot talk to everyone at once. And then test whether what you think their interests are is right. We are holding interviews, starting conversations and sending out questionnaires. It goes a very long way, but I think it is necessary if we are to have a clear view of who they are, what their interests are and where they stand.

I have said about Impact 2030, and I think it tells a very good story, that every stakeholder who picks up that handsome booklet should really be saying: blimey, there are things in here I have questions about, but this bit is good for me. That is my main aim: that our stakeholders say of our ambitions, it’s not all fun, but there is something in it that serves our interests too. Look, we have the permits. We hold the licences to do what we want to do. But you also need permission. You need those around you to be willing to let the port develop in this way. That is what we are after.

Transparency and sharing information are one thing. Strategic decisions are another level: in the end they are taken by the supervisory board and the shareholders. What part do stakeholders play there?

König: We have a supervisory board, and it differs quite a bit from boards of directors here in Flanders, which meet every month. Ours meets four times a year. It really does stick to the big-picture matters: the strategic things we do, and regular business such as the annual reporting and the audits.

An example of how we involve stakeholders in strategic matters: we are writing a nature vision for the port. How do we, as a port, treat nature, and how will we later judge whether we are doing it well? We discuss that with our own shareholders, but also with the nature and environmental groups. How do you see it? What sort of document would let you check that the port is doing what it promises? I think we had some very good conversations, and the nature vision is the result. It has not yet been formally approved; that will happen in the next two months, and then we go live with it. It is typical of the documents drawn up together with stakeholders. We have more like it. Take our development strategy: where will we still expand, on which sites, with what kind of business? There you certainly involve the political stakeholders closely.

Sometimes interests really do clash, among stakeholders or between the port and its stakeholders. How do you deal with that?

König: I think it always helps a lot to find out from your stakeholders: what really keeps you awake at night? What someone shouts about is not always what keeps them awake. There may be something else behind it. So having those good conversations and finding out what is really going on matters a great deal. Then you can ask yourself: can we do something with that, is there some way we can take that worry away? That is the ultimate prize. Then someone who at first looks like an opponent of the development may end up a supporter, because they get something out of it they had not expected. That is what you have to look for. It is not easy, it takes a lot of time, and we are working on it.

"What someone shouts about is not always what keeps them awake."

That is mostly the work of the people who deal with it day to day: managers like you. What is the role of the supervisory board, a board of directors, which is not in direct contact with those stakeholders? How do you see the division of roles?

König: Our executive board has four people: a chief financial officer, an operations director and a director of commerce slash sustainability. With us that is one job. We said: we think sustainability is so important, and there always has to be a proper weighing of commerce against sustainability, so we put both in one and the same person. Whether that makes for a split personality is for them to work out. And as chief executive I try to keep an eye on the whole thing from above and to represent the company.

Then there is the supervisory board, which in our case is part political, part independent. We have eight shareholders and eight members of the board. Half are politicians, half independent. Half come from Flanders, half from the Netherlands. That gives us a good mix of people with sensitive antennae for what is going on in society. We put our plans to them, certainly when it comes to stakeholder management, or something like the nature vision or a strategic spatial vision. In the end they are the ones who sign it off. And then the critical questions come. It would be worrying if they didn’t. But so far it has all gone very co-operatively and harmoniously. I am glad to have a broad supervisory board, because you get input from all sides. That is a great help.

Do individual, sensitive stakeholder cases also reach the supervisory board? And when?

König: Yes. Not so long ago, before I arrived, there was a difference of opinion about the port’s role in security, and in particular organised crime that undermines the legal economy. A lot of fruit from South America arrives in Vlissingen. Ports are vulnerable to drug imports in any case. Rotterdam and Antwerp have made a pretty massive effort to stem the flow, and then people look for other routes. Critical remarks were made at the time: shouldn’t the port, strategically, be doing more about security? There was a disagreement about that. How long it lasted I don’t know exactly, because it was before my time, but it took a while before the port said: all right, shareholder, if you think this is our job too, we’ll get on with it.

I think that is typical of ports. I know a few by now, and every port boss wrestles with the same problem: more and more is being pushed onto the port as its responsibility. But a port has only two ways of making money: leasing out land long-term, in other words concessions, and port dues from the ships that call. All sorts of extra demands mean more costs but no more income. So it is hardly surprising that there was some debate. In the end it happened, and we now work perfectly with all sorts of agencies to counter those drug shipments. Does it work? You know what you catch, but not what you don’t. But the practical co-operation with the coastguard, the police, the port services, the Marechaussee and customs is at a very high level.

The same goes for the military effort. We had nothing to do with that at all, and now we do. It has grown enormously in the past few years. We have taken on military people ourselves, because they understand better how a military organisation works. I never served in the army myself; I was declared permanently unfit. Terribly serious, but I was delighted at the time. It is a different language, after all, so it is good to have people who speak it. These are changes of recent years that ask something different of you than before. And it is a matter of give and take between your shareholder and you as an organisation.

The supervisory board itself includes stakeholders: shareholders with other responsibilities besides, some of them political. Does that cause tension? Does it ever get personal?

König: Personal, not really. But what you do see, and it is devilishly complicated, certainly for politicians (I do feel for them, to be quite honest), is this: the politicians on our supervisory board are, on the one hand, the licensing authority. Then they are the enforcer. Then guarantor, financier. And sometimes that is all one person, who also sits on the supervisory board. When they sit there, they have to do what is good for our company. As enforcer of the permit, they may have to be very strict with us. And as guarantor they have to ask themselves: am I looking after the interests of my province or city, or those of the port authority? They have to switch hats very often.

That is also why Zeeland Seaports, which was then Vlissingen and Terneuzen, had only independent supervisors. For exactly this reason. On the Ghent, Flemish side it was entirely political. At the merger a typically Belgian solution was chosen: half and half. That sometimes makes things complicated for them, and so for us too.

Finally, by way of tradition, a question from the bingo drum. Number 26: if your organisation were a person, what would that person learn from you?

König: It would learn that in everything you do, you should ask yourself: am I also doing someone else harm here? If you are, at heart, willing to look at someone else’s interests, you may reach different conclusions when you weigh things up. And in the end that can move things forward. Because the moment you start fighting each other, sooner or later you will lose. Or sooner or later you will feel the ill effects.

My parents always said: you must not use the words "always" and "never", because it is never always so and it is never never so. That saves you a lot of conflict. Those are two words we try to avoid.

You wanted to add something about those politicians before we finish.

König: I said I sometimes feel a bit sorry for politicians. Here is why: we put them there to take decisions for the long term. Not everyone can see where those decisions lead, but they are needed. And because of social media, politicians are punished hard for decisions they take today that not everyone understands. That takes some of the fun out of the job. On the one hand they are inclined to take precisely those long-term decisions; at the same time they get slapped down hard, so they may be tempted to take short-term decisions instead. That is a squeeze I would not like to be in. I am not cut out for it either.

"We put politicians there to take decisions for the long term, but they are punished today for decisions that not everyone understands."

Cas König comes from the east of the Netherlands and studied environmental engineering in the north of the country, where he stayed to work. He completed an MBA early in his career. From 2009 to 2015 he was chief executive of ESD-SIC in Delfzijl, and in 2013 he was named Plant Manager of the Year for the Dutch and Flemish process industry. From 2015 to 2017 he ran the Aldel aluminium plant (Klesch Aluminium) in Delfzijl. In September 2017 he became chief executive of Groningen Seaports, which manages the ports of Delfzijl and Eemshaven. He has chaired the Industrietafel Noord-Nederland, a forum for industry in the northern Netherlands, since 2018. In 2023 he collected the Langman Prize, on behalf of its backers, among them Groningen Seaports and Gasunie, for the floating LNG terminal at Eemshaven, built within six months of the start of the war in Ukraine. Since June 2025 he has been chief executive of North Sea Port, succeeding Daan Schalck.

This interview is based on Governance Talks, GUBERNA’s podcast about good governance in practice.