Postby The Dieselduck » Wed Nov 11, 2015 6:28 pm
InterManager: ‘There is a serious oversupply of seafarers’
November 11th, 2015 Splash 24/7
Douglas: How shipping has changed. In the boom times one of the few bottlenecks for owners making ever-fatter profits was a perceived potential shortage of seafarers as the global fleet expanded at record levels. Now, however, as the industry enters its eighth year of recession, a leading name in shipmanagement tells Maritime CEO of the severe oversupply in crew numbers across the world.
Captain Kuba Szymanski is the secretary general of InterManager, the association for shipmanagers.
“There is a serious oversupply of seafarers, especially in the offshore sector, but also in the container trade. This means no pressure on salaries and conditions of employment coming from seafarers,” Szymanski says.
The often talked about shortage of sea staff, the InterManager boss says is a “very dangerous myth”.
Szymanski is confident shipmanagement as a business is one set to grow, helped by the latest generation of owners being more hands off when it comes to the traditional hands on running of day-to-day operations at shipping lines.
“Owners who have decided to relinquish access to sea staff are now heavily dependent on crew and shipmanagers. I can see this trend deepening,” says the Polish national.