SSG No 10 - Shipgaz

VDR/JoHnS
Ralf Bedranowsky, head of DB Shipping,
a division of the Deutsche Bank (DB), said
the growing size of the global fleet meant
that about 100,000 additional seamen
would need to be hired world-wide up to
2011, a third of them officers.
History shows us that
shipping is a cyclical
business and that hard
times will return again.
Frank leonhardt
of VDR.
In Germany, hardly a
day now goes by without
some new company-based
trainee initiative
being announced
and shipowners appear
to be making some
headway. According to
VDR Chairman Frank
Leonhardt, German
owners increased training slots on their
ships two and a half times in the three
years up to late 2007. He acknowledges
however that much remains to be done
and also notes that German owners have
long urged removal of a stipulation that
captains on German ships need to speak
German.
Nikolaus Schües said Laeisz was working
to ensure that rising operational costs
did not contradict socially responsible personnel
policies. “That’s why our crews stay
with us longer”, he said.
Seafarers want their share
Making what appears to be a similar point,
but in a different way, is V. Ships MD Captain
Kurt Buchholz. In remarks prepared
for delivery in late May at the 11th European
Manning & Training Conference in
Poland, he acknowledges the problem but
suggests there is not a personnel shortage
whenever above-average pay and better
onboard facilities are offered.
“We need to be competitive but owners
have been enjoying high freight rates
and seafarers obviously want their share,
as salary developments prove”, he says.
“If owners want cheap crews, and that’s a
hard task, they have to accept that they are
cheap for a reason and couldn’t find betterpaid
employment”, says Buchholz .
As for bunkers, the VDR says the heavy
oil price has tripled in three years and that
bEluGA SkYSAIlS
The MS beluga SkySails – said to have saved 10–15 per cent of fuel costs per day with her 160
square metres kite.
crude oil costs continue to increase.
Hamburg Süd indicated how the sparing
costs were hitting Germany’s shipping
majors. It said the average price per ton
of bunkers had risen to nearly USD 350
(Rotterdam base) in 2007 – about USD
60 or over 20 per cent more than a year
earlier. At the start of last November it
topped USD 500 and stood at USD 470
at the end of the year, Hamburg Süd
declared. A concerned TT Line head
Hanns Contzen said bunker costs in his
SHIPPING AND SHIP MANAGEMENT
company had quadrupled since 2001. TT
was now spending EUR 30 million a year
on fuel, he said.
Beluga Shipping’s MD Captain Niels
Stolberg told this correspondent recently
that owners could flank expansion strategies
with safeguards to offset currency rate
fluctuations or rising bunkers. He said
they could profit from exchange rates by
ordering newbuildings in Dollars or taking
advantage of freight rates in Euros. As
for bunkers, he pointed to the novel Sky-
SCANDINAVIAN SHIPPING GAZETTE • MAY 16, 2008 59