Editorial:

The key to quality shipping

The term “quality shipping” has become a frequently used expression. It’s demanded by politicians when an accident has occurred, it’s a term used by the shipping industry when lobbying for better conditions and shipping companies use it in their marketing.

As beauty always is in the eye of the beholder, quality is always determined by the one ordering the service or the product. If it lives up to the customer’s expectations, then it is a quality product or service.

The dilemma for shipping is that the services it provides with few exemptions contribute to the value added to the product, making the maritime transport just a cost. The closer the shipped cargo is to the end consumer, i.e. the more value added to the goods, other factors than just price will however become more important, factors such as reliability, frequency and cargo safety.

Today, environmental concerns have also become an increasingly important factor for the image of both the shipping company and the producer of the finished or nearly finished product. The forest industry in Northern Europe is an example, shipping their products on modern ro-ro carriers, often with the forest company logo on the side of the ship, which is fuelled by low-sulphur bunker oils and often equipped with catalytic converters or other means to reduce emissions to air.

At the other end of the scale (as far away from the end consumer as possible), transports of low value cargo – which constitutes the bulk of all cargo carried by sea – is still a sector where price is the overwhelmingly quality factor. This is also the most important market for substandard operators of vessels which often has all the relevant certificates in place, sometimes issued by a classification society with a long – but seldom heard of – name, on behalf of a sovereign flag state without its own maritime administration and without any other ambitions than to earn money on its ship registry. These operators set the cost-level in a market where price is the only quality factor, making life very difficult for serious operators.

The society tries to keep maritime transport at an acceptable safety and security level by legislation and control of the observation of the laws. New legislation and stricter inspections always follow calls for action to improve maritime safety. History however shows that public pressure often has greater effect than legislation, which sometimes actually is counter-productive. The EU demand that 25 per cent of all vessels must be inspected by the port state control in all member countries is one example. This has lead to a situation where the majority of all inspections are made on vessels flying flags on the Paris MOU white list of quality ship registers, since inspecting rust-buckets often are too time consuming and resource exacting if the authority is to live up to the 25 per cent goal.

Following this path towards the elimination of substandard shipping could only lead to more rules and increased inspection efforts, which at some point also will start to reduce maritime transport as a highly effective mode of transport.
Stricter rules and regulations also leads to higher costs for serious operators and widens the cost gap to those operators who never had the ambition to follow the rules anyway. Again, the winner is substandard shipping.

The key to quality shipping is in the hands of the cargo owners. As long as price is the only factor in a market where not 100 per cent of all ships are thoroughly inspected, substandard shipping will prevail. If public awareness of the risks and problems created by substandard shipping grew, pressure would mount on cargo owners. The same day cargo owners say “we will not accept substandard ships”, the problem will be gone.

Rolf P. Nilsson
Editor-in-Chief