Managing vessels in house rather than by third party can create better efficiencies and higher vessel performance especially if you have one crew nationality onboard, according to Mohammad Souri, Chairman of NITC.

Addessing the Intertanko Poseidon Challenge conference in Istanbul, the NITC Chairman said mixed crews can be successful onboard ship, “but in my opinion you should not have any more than two or three different nationalities. If you are going to have a combination of all different nationalities it could be messy unless you have a different system. Through experience, one two or a maximum of three nationalities is more than sufficient to have onboard,” he told delegates.

“We are trying our best to have our own Iranian staff onboard our ships. I believe that one nationality onboard always delivers a better performance because you don’t have different mentalities.

“Through years of experience we have learned that if we manage the vessels ourselves, we generate better efficiencies and performance. The reason is firstly because of the benefits of having one nationality as crew; secondly is drawing on the work of permanent staff and thirdly is that our own national people consider the ships they work on as a national asset so they give greater priority to the vessels,” he added.

“Our ships have had zero detentions in the last 15 years, hardly any pollution that has been reported and hardly any accidents. You cannot ignore accidents and you cannot ignore pollution but you can reduce them and what we have worked on over the last few years has helped us to succeed in reducing these as much as possible,” delegates were told.