Presidential End Year Address

Dear Members

As 2012 comes to a close I would like to thank you for your involvement and support of InterManager this past year. No doubt the shipping industry continues to be challenged on a number of fronts given the prevailing global economic overhang. Needless to say, shipping will continue to dominate the global landscape and I am confident that we will as an industry and an association pull together and ride out these challenges.

Let me take this opportunity to recognize and thank the following for their efforts to guide InterManager this past year:

To our past President – Alastair Evitt for his skillful leadership over the past two years at the height of very challenging times in the industry.

To our Secretary General – Kuba Szymanski for his true commitment and dogged efforts to manage the different facets of the association.

To Peter Curtis, Wim van Noortwijk, Alex Albertini, and Ian MacLean who are currently serving as Vice Presidents of the association and who have provided excellent guidance to the Executive Board to strengthen the base for a sustained future.

To Rajaish Bajpaee for Chairing the KPI Foundation through its birth pains and to seeing to its future successful commercial use by our members and the rest of the shipping community, as well as, to Markus Schmitz for his tireless effort at building the core of the Shipping KPI System.

To George Hoyt and Ole Stene as past Vice Presidents for their efforts at holding the fort in coordination with Alastair Evitt. Special mention to George Hoyt for continuing to carry the flag and assist our Secretary General, in identifying and developing a range of special projects which the association will be considering in 2013 as part of several new thrusts.

To Capt. Paddy McKnight for his tireless efforts in IMO as InterManager’s permanent representative and his excellent “IMO reports”.

While we rely on heavy and expensive assets that create the means for shipping to proceed, it is the human side of shipping, our people, that provide the heart and soul of shipping. It is in this area that I hope InterManager will continue to pursue new initiatives that will help ensure a stronger image of the industry to help attract the best and brightest into the workforce of the future – be in on aboard or ashore in support of operations. To this end, several special projects will be put forth to the Executive Board for consideration including:

1) Short listing outstanding quality education and training institutions globally to which our members can work with to develop the future global maritime professional
2) Working with owners to provide adequate and timely berths on board for the needed competency building sea time
3) Developing flexible and workable budgets with shipowners to ensure that training needs are not unnecessarily compromised during the current challenging periods
4) Developing a range of Crew Surveys to help identify areas of focus that shipmanagers and crew managers should be working on in order to further effectively recruit, develop and retain quality professionals in the industry
5) Working closely with various international institutions such as the IMO to enhance the presence of the association providing a voice from managers on our views towards the industry
6) Developing strategic relationships with the Group of the Round Table in order to more effectively engage owners in discussions on areas of common interest and importance
7) Developing for our membership a Young Executive program to stimulate networking opportunities across the association membership for all levels of our member’s respective organizations and to bring in the next generation into the industry fold.

To this end a Special Projects group will be formed to help interface with members in order to best serve their individual interests as best as possible.

Meantime, our Secretary General will be concentrating on growing the membership base. In this regard I am happy to share that we have two crew managers from the Philippines who will be putting forward their applications for consideration by the Membership Committee at the start of the year, as well as, a member of the P&I network, also based in the Philippines who has expressed keen interest to join the InterManager network. I hope that despite the challenges ahead that we can continue to bring in more parties who can help invigorate engaged discussions in the various for a that InterManager intends to pursue in the year ahead, and invite each of you to nominate potential member from your own respective networks.

Lastly, during the forthcoming Executive Board meeting in London on the 6th of February, we will be presenting the updated working budget for the year, with recommendations coming from our Treasurer, Alex Albertini, who has worked closely with our Secretary General, Kuba Szymanski on how we can shore up our finances, by attracting more members while helping current members sustain their engagement with InterManager. All together a proposed win-win set up which will be up for consideration and approval. The work program for the association will also be presented by Wim van Noortwijk and this promises to help extend our presence in the industry altogether.

I look forward to seeing you in February. In the meantime, please accept my best wishes to you and your families during this Christmas season and most especially for the coming New Year.

Kind regards.

Gerardo A. Borromeo – President and
Kuba Szymanski Secretary General