On March 6 and 12, NYK held emergency safety conferences in Imabari city and Tokyo, Japan, for 84 participants representing 35 Japanese shipowners and ship-management companies.

These seminars are part of an effort by the company’s Dry Bulk Division to become the world’s leading dry bulk fleet. To eliminate accidents and to rapidly address safety requirements of global resource majors in recent years, NYK continues to work with shipowners and ship-management companies to improve the fleet.

The importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives is attracting a lot of attention, and in the dry-bulk business, shippers such as global resource majors tend to have stricter safety and environmental standards than those designated in regulations and treaties. NYK is thus making various efforts to meet these requirements at an early stage because maintaining the quality of the NYK owned and operated fleet will directly impact the company’s competitiveness.

NYK strives to establish a seamless relationship with shipowners and ship-management companies by having captains and chief engineers participate in these conferences to discuss safety and environmental measures with NYK management.

In fact, NYK is currently promoting the use of the application “LiVE for Shipmanager,” which makes use of data collected from the ship information management system (SIMS), and enables the gathering, monitoring, and sharing of detailed data between ship and shore for safe, efficient operations.

During the upcoming summer, original checklists will be drafted by the Dry-bulk Division, and 50 vessels will be visited to examine the issues on the list and thus increase safety awareness on both land and ship.

In autumn, the annual dry-bulk safety conference will be held with Japanese shipowners and ship-management companies to share safe operation awareness on dry-bulk vessels and measures to address troubles.

And in winter, discussions will focus on preventing accidents during stormy weather, gathering weather information, and avoiding accidents when mooring between land and ship.

In accordance with its medium-term management plan “Staying Ahead 2022 with Digitalization and Green,” NYK is making efforts for safe ship-management to minimize market volatility and secure stable earnings in the dry-bulk business.