Tanker Shipping & Trade Awards crown successful 2014 Conference

The Tanker Shipping & Trade Awards have once again recognised the leading lights in the tanker industry, with Rajaish Bajpaee, CEO of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement being honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award

Taking place at the close of the two-day Tanker Shipping & Trade Conference at the Gloucester Millennium Hotel, London, the Awards recognised leading companies, innovators and individuals, culminating in Mr Bajpaee’s recognition for his vast and ongoing contribution to the tools, technology, processes and personnel of the shipping industry.

Receiving his award, Mr Bajpaee said: “I have been privileged to act as the advocate of seafarers, to whom we are beholden in so many ways.”

Also recognised as the inaugural winner of the Tanker Shipping & Trade Industry Leader Award was Robert Bugbee, who in his most recent in his role in his 25 years in the shipping trade, has overseen Scorpio Tankers’ and Scorpio Bulkers’ rise to pre-eminence as the group’s president and director.

The Tanker Shipping & Trade Technical Innovation Award went to Clean Marine for its Allstream Exhaust Gas Cleaning System, which allows all exhaust sources to be served by a single scrubber system. This won out over Maersk Tankers’ adoption of 3D printing and Scanjet’s highly sophisticated, intelligent tank cleaning system.

In the Operational Excellence Award, Nick Quarmby of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency took the prize for the Agency’s work in taking the UK lead in securing recent amendments to International Instruments at IMO relating to verification of tanker damage stability. Other entrants in this category were Norden for its work in transparent reporting on CO2 emissions across its fleet and Shell Marine for its work in implementing a five-year programme to achieve a paradigm shift in vessel management.

Earlier in the day, the Tanker Shipping and Trade Conference 2014 had concluded with sessions looking at vessel lifecycle management and training and development. The first of these sessions began with a look at the driving factors behind new tanker orders by Christopher Pålsson and Niklas Bengtsson of Maritime Insight. In this, they suggested that 700 of 6,300 new ship orders will be for ‘new fuel’ vessels in order to meet new environmental regulation.

This was followed by a presentation by Mark Cameron, COO of Ardmore Shipping, who emphasised the value of the accurate measurement of ship performance as the route to environmental transparency, saying: “Transparency is the new green.”

Steve Bee of Intertek Shipcare Services then went on to discuss the issue of fuel quality in relation to changes in legislative requirement, during which he raised the alarming prospect of the switch to low-sulphur fuels potentially causing engine damage. Trevor Solomon, business manager of International Paints then made the case for coatings offering fuel savings.

The final session of the Conference looked at training and development, beginning with an interview with Robert Brindle on the impact of the Maritime Labour Convention a year into its implementation. There then followed an assessment of mandatory security training for seafarers by Chris Ashcroft, managing director of Independent Maritime Security Associates.

The panel debate then looked at the place of training in an era of squeezed budgets and increased operational pressure. This featured Carsten Gierga of the Ethiopia Maritime Training Institute, who outlined his work in developing a new generation of seafarers. Also on hand was Dr Tim Lunel of the International Tanker Owners’ Pollution Federation (ITOPF), who spoke about his organisation’s efforts in preventing and dealing with spills. During this debate, Rajaish Bajpaee then made it clear that he felt that the industry will only achieve its training goals if it focuses on the purpose of training rather than purely on the methods and means of its implementation.