SSG No 10 - Shipgaz

SHIPPING AND SHIP MANAGEMENT
The Danish example
Too few young people
❯
In Denmark the maritime industry as
a whole is working very hard with the
recruitment issue. Last year they all joined
up in a DKK 12 million campaign in
order to target a large number of the
youngsters that were about to make a
career choice. The second stage of the
campaign has just been launched with
commercials on national television.
Fairly good result
This comes after a seven months campaign
attending job fairs, education days at high
schools and special arrangements in certain
cities throughout the country. So far the
campaign has given a fairly good result, but
not good enough as it has not met the goal
for maritime personnel in the years to
come. The maritime cluster and the World
Careers campaign are competing with all
the other career lines over a smaller than
usual number of young people. Back in the
1980’s – 18 to 22 years ago – the birth rate
was historically low. It was close to half of
the rate of the good years in the 1960’s,
when around 85,000 children were born
annually. This is part of the main problem
for the maritime cluster today: Too few
young people to pick from. The maritime
cluster has even harder pressure on the
campaign as the parliament has granted the
industry a series of financial privileges
against a higher intake to maritime education.
In fact it will be double up to nearly
400 per year with the latest agreement.
The capacity of education is at present
220 at Simac (Svendborg International
Maritime Academy). The January classes
this year started with 50 students instead
of the 110 possible. Marstal Navigationsskole
has one class of 25 students, but has
the capacity to open another class if needed.
On the engineering side the numbers
are much higher. There are at present
1,000 students giving a full house at all
schools educating engineers for both land
jobs and seafaring jobs.
bent mikkelsen
Even though the lack of officers was created
in different ways in different parts of
Europe – in Sweden, for instance, the shipping
industry was almost wiped out and
nobody could ask anybody to start a career
at sea, which was not the case in other parts
of Europe – it has not been hard to come
to a mutual understanding that something
must be done.
Done their part
“We in Ecsa have been very good at finding
a consensus, and the issue of manning
has been with us for a long time. I think we
have done our part throughout the economical
upswing we have had for quite
some time now”, says Lennart Simonsson,
president of Ecsa (European Community
Shipowners’ Association) and continues:
“But then it all comes back to having
neutral competition between nations within
the European Union, and here I must
say that if the EU and the Commission,
has been good for anything it has been
good for shipping. They understood at an
early stage the importance of shipping.”
Changing perspective from his role as
president of Ecsa to his role as CEO of
Swedish shipping group Broström, Lennart
Simonsson makes the point of creating a
30 SCANDINAVIAN SHIPPING GAZETTE • MAY 21, 2007
BENT MIKKELSEN