The IMO headquarters in London. Photo: IMO

IMO – 60 years of shaping shipping
Sixty years ago at a conference in Geneva, the United Nations adopted a convention establishing a special body for shipping. The Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO) got off to a slow start and it took ten years for the convention to come into force and the agency to have its first assembly. Since then, the IMO as we know it today has changed both name and objectives and is now the source of approximately 50 conventions and hundreds of codes, guidelines and recommendations.

Martin Saarikangas, the man who saved Finnish shipbuilding, depicted in 1998.

The bankruptcy was unnecessary
Without Martin Saarikangas’ actions almost twenty years ago, there would probably be no cruise vessels under construction in Finland today. In an interview with SSG, the man who saved the Finnish shipbuilding talks about the past and a little bit about the future, too.

THEME SECTION:
Continued profiling of Maritime Denmark

Upper secondary school pupils awaiting a tour on a blue container ship. Photo: World Career

The campaign World Career in Denmark continues for another year with a massive profiling of the maritime cluster in Denmark towards young people in school. The campaign has been granted another million DKK donation from the Den Maritime Fond (The Maritime Foundation) and four other foundations attached to shipping companies.

Photo: Olympic shipping

Offshore recruitment:
Demand outstrips supply
Norwegian offshore operators are faced with a severe shortage of personnel and many owners are forced to run their fleet with less experienced crews than they would have liked. Current recruiting is slow to pick up and it has proved difficult to reverse a very negative trend, which started in the middle of the 1980s.

Carsten Rousing is keen on giving people in trouble a second chance.
Photo: Bent Mikkelsen

The benefit of giving a
second chance
In Rederiet C. Rousing A/S the owner Carsten Rousing has a strong belief in forming his own crews, seen in a long perspective. Also the owner has a strong social commitment to his crews, and does not give up if a crewmember is in trouble. In fact, Rederiet C. Rousing has several crewmembers that have been picked up from the social authorities and taken under the company’s wing for training to become skilled members of staff.

Swedish training ship takes its second group
The Atlantic Cartier did its first trip as a training vessel this autumn with a batch of students from Kalmar Maritime Academy. A new group of students, this time from Chalmers shipping and marine technology, are preparing for their first trip at sea right now. “They began their training on January 21 and hopefully they will sign on February 25, but now we hear the vessel is delayed”, says Ove Germundsson, who is responsible for the course at Chalmers.

Money the main motive for staying at sea
Money is the main motivator for keeping seafarers at sea. At least that is what the 229 seafarers who answered the web site Shiptalk’s Life at Sea survey think. The survey was conducted last autumn among voluntary visitors to the Shiptalk site. Those who responded were mainly men in senior positions, 43 per cent, who went to sea straight after school between the ages of 16 and 21.

Where did the young
Spica sailor go?
When talking about recruitment the question is always: How do you keep young people in the line of work in the future? Why did they miss the chance of being a part of a crew on board a ship? And if not, did the job live up to expectations for this particular person? These questions were drawn up by the writer of these lines along with the photo on the next page, showing a young man on his first assignment on board the coaster Spica in its home port of Nørresundby.

Photo: Bent Mikkelsen

The art of keeping the staff
The officer shortage has led to increased salary levels around the world. But there are other ways than just offering money. Swedish Wallenius Marine also uses other means both to attract officers and keeping them in the company.